Material Constitution - A Reader
Rea (Michael), Ed.
This Page provides (where held) the Abstract of the above Book and those of all the Papers contained in it.
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Amazon Customer Review – Positive

  1. The problems of material constitution arise from the fact that material objects can be constituted of different parts at different times (or, for the modal1 versions of the problems, at different possible worlds). They are among the trickiest and most fascinating metaphysical problems, on a par with the problems of free will or time. This book is the only anthology dedicated to this area of metaphysics, and for that reason alone it is invaluable to a contemporary analytical metaphysician.
  2. Work in this area tends to focus around variations on three or four different puzzles. To give you an idea of what this book is about, I will consider one of these puzzles and the various proposed solutions to it: the puzzle of Tibbles the cat2.
  3. The original version of this puzzle is attributed by Peter Geach to the medieval philosopher William of Sherwood, but a similar puzzle dates back to the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (circa 200 B. C.). A simplified version is as follows. Suppose Tibbles the cat3's tail is severed from his body and destroyed at time T. Prior to T, Tibbles4 was divisible into two parts: his tail, and the rest of him, which we can call "Tibbles-Minus5". (Tibbles6 minus his tail, that is.) That he was thus divisible is shown by the fact that at T Tibbles7' tail was separated from Tibbles-Minus8. Now Tibbles9, unfortunate cat though he may be, survived this injury, and so did Tibbles-Minus10. But since his tail was destroyed, all that remains of Tibbles11 is Tibbles-Minus12. So after T Tibbles13 and Tibbles-Minus14 occupy exactly the same region of space. But two distinct material objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time, so it seems that after T Tibbles15 is identical to Tibbles-Minus16. And yet, Tibbles17 *cannot* be identical to Tibbles-Minus18, because Tibbles19 has properties that Tibbles-Minus20 does not--for instance, the property of having once had a tail, and the property of having lost a tail, not to mention the property of being a cat. (Likewise Tibbles-Minus21 has properties Tibbles22 does not have, like having been attached to a cat's tail and having occupied a smaller volume than Tibbles23.)
  4. I have presented the problem informally, but it can be presented with formal logical rigor so as to yield a contradiction from premises that are individually quite plausible. The different solutions to this puzzle all deny one or another of the premises that generate the contradiction. Here are three of the ones considered in this book:
    • (1) Co-locationism. This view says that there can be two distinct material objects that are made of the same atoms (or elementary particles) and are in the same place at the same time. Indeed, there can be more than two, perhaps innumerably many. The puzzle is solved by denying the premise that says this kind of co-location is impossible. On one version of this view, what is impossible is not that two material objects should be in the same place at the same time, but that two material objects of the same *kind* should be in the same place at the same time. Thus, it is held, a statue24 can be co-located with the lump of clay it is made of. (But they are not the same thing; the lump of clay existed before the statue25 did.) The clay, after all, is just the material of which the statue26 is made, and there is no reason the material cannot be in the same place as the object made.
    • (2) Eliminativism. This view says that one of the two material objects in question – either Tibbles27 or Tibbles-Minus28, perhaps both – do not exist. According to one version of this view, Tibbles29 exists, but his tail and Tibbles-Minus30 do not. What exist in their place, rather, are elementary particles (or perhaps atoms and molecules, or cells) arranged spatially in a certain way. But these particles do not *compose* any bigger object, just as the molecules in a liter of air do not compose any bigger whole. On another version, there is no Tibbles31 either, just a lot of tiny particles arranged in a complex pattern.
    • (3) Temporal parts theory. On this view Tibbles32 and Tibbles-Minus33 are not co-located and do not have the same parts even though they occupy a certain common spatial region at a certain time. This is because Tibbles34 and Tibble-Minus are extended in time as well as in space; just as they have spatial parts extending in various spatial directions, so they have temporal parts extending from past to future. Or better, they have *spatiotemporal* parts extending through a region of spacetime. It so happens that Tibbles35 and Tibbles-Minus36 coincide (have common parts) in the part of Tibbles37' career that follows the loss of his tail. But prior to this they do not coincide; rather Tibbles-Minus38 is a part of Tibbles39. Thus, there are two different objects, which do not have the same parts or the same spatiotemporal location, so that there is no problem as to how they could be distinct.
  5. Unfortunately I lack space to go through the other solutions in the anthology, or even to adequately explain these three. But then my purpose is to tell you something about the book, not to replace it. If you want to know more, you'll have to get ahold of it.

Amazon Customer Review – Less Positive
  1. This book should be read by any scholar who wants a better grasp of the implications of identity criteria40 on formal and descriptive ontology. That said, the selection of papers represented in this edition give away a predilection for semantic arguments that have nothing substantive to contribute to an understanding of actual problems of 'Material Constitution'.
  2. The title is misleading, in that the overwhelming majority of contributors to this collection all have serious reservations against de re readings on identity! In fact, one contributor, David Wiggins, who is well known for his work on identity criteria41, argues against the existence of de re modality!42 This collection is not about "the furniture of the world" but is instead a treatise on a semantic understanding of identity and objects, with the caveat that this is the sole and correct treatment of the subject. The bias is against any de re analysis of objects, since the contributors find that to be the wrong way of understanding objects and the identity of objects.
  3. Interestingly, a lot of the contributors appeal to or use mereological axioms only to undermine any mereological understanding of the constitution of objects. And some use mereology to try and bolster their point that objects can only be understood in de dicto terms. This runs counter-intuitively to the ontological "neutrality" of mereology for objects, ideal or material. In fact, I would say that this book is about the semantics43 of objects and not about any "material constitution" of objects, unless it is about the fallacy of de re understanding of objects; that is, this book should be named the 'De Dicto Constitution of Identity'.
Book Comment

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland, 1997


"Chandler (Hugh S.) - Constitutivity and Identity"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader


Philosophers Index Abstract
    A complex entity is demonstrably distinct from its parts and from the set of its parts. This does not refute materialism. Materialists can still hold that every complex entity is one and the same as the aggregate of its parts. Two arguments against this view are examined; but both prove unsuccessful.

Paper Comment


"Chisholm (Roderick) - Identity Through Time"

Source: Van Inwagen & Zimmerman - Metaphysics: The Big Questions, 1998


Author’s Introduction
  1. According to Bishop Butler, when we say of a physical thing existing at one time that it is identical with or the same as a physical thing existing at some other time (“this is the same ship we traveled on before”), we are likely to be using the expression “same” or “identical” in a “loose and popular1 sense”.
  2. But when we say of a person existing at one time that he is identical with or the same as a person existing at some other time (“the ship has the same captain it had before”), we are likely to be using the expression “same” or “identical” in a “strict and philosophical2 sense”.
  3. I shall attempt to give an interpretation of these two theses; and I shall suggest that there is at least an element of truth in each.

Paper Comment


"Doepke (Frederick) - Spatially Coinciding Objects"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader


Philosophers Index Abstract
  1. This article presents a theory of the (time-variant) "constitution" relation, which obtains between two distinct objects which occupy the same place at the same time.
  2. It explains why pairs of them (eg. a gold statue1 and the gold of the statue2, a person and his or her body) are indiscernible in a variety of logically independent respects, such as place, color, shape, and weight.
  3. It accounts for the formal features – notably, the asymmetry – of the constitution relation. (Recall that identity is symmetrical.)
  4. In rebutting a variety of attempts to subvert David Wiggins' argument that distinct objects can spatially coincide, the article offers the following:
    1. A general argument against relativizing identity (eg. sortally3 or temporally);
    2. Some explanation of the theoretical point of concepts of continuants;
    3. An anti-reductionist4 argument in favor of admitting constituted objects (eg. organisms) in addition to objects which constitute them (eg. collections of fundamental particles).

Paper Comment


"Geach (Peter) - Reference and Generality (Selections)"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader

Paper Comment


"Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader


Philosophers Index Abstract
  1. Identities formed with proper names may be contingent. This claim is made first through an example.
  2. The paper then develops a theory of the semantics1 of concrete things, with contingent identity2 as a consequence.
  3. This general theory lets concrete things be made up canonically from fundamental physical entities.
  4. It includes theories of proper names, variables, cross-world identity with respect to a sortal3, and modal4 and dispositional properties.
  5. The theory, it is argued, is coherent and superior to its rivals, in that it stems naturally from a systematic picture of the physical world.

Paper Comment

Write-up7 (as at 04/04/2026 21:54:43): Gibbard - Contingent Identity

Introductory Note
  • This Note provides my detailed analysis and review of "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity".
  • Originally, this write-up was only available as a PDF. Click File Note (PDF). I’ve now converted this to Note format.
  • I’m not sure when I wrote it; but my timesheet system says I spent 21.5 hours on it back in 2003/4. The Appendix is earlier. I’ve left the text as it was, for now.
  • Note that when this Paper was ‘set’, we were instructed to stop reading about half-way through Section V, so my analysis does just that. I doubt I read the rest of the Paper, as it’s rather technical.

Analysis
  1. Introduction
    • Gibbard is going to argue that, under certain conditions, it’s plausible to claim that a statue – (s) – is identical to the piece of clay – (c) – from which it is made. If this is so, then Gibbard will show that this identity is contingent8.
    • To define “contingent identity”, Gibbard introduces the formula: s = c & ◇ (s exists and c exists and s ≠ c), which translates as:
        “the statue is identical to the clay, and it’s possible that both statue and clay should exist and yet the statue not be identical to the clay”.
    • Gibbard sees (but doesn’t immediately specify) many advantages to the claim that not all true identities are necessary. To substantiate this claim he’ll need to develop theories about:
      1. Concrete things, and …
      2. Proper names.
    • Gibbard agrees that Kripke has shown9 that most purported examples of contingent identity fail because they depend on incorrect accounts of necessity and reference. Prior to Kripke it was thought that all necessary truths could be known a priori, so a manifestly a posteriori identity such as “Hesperus = Phosphorus” was taken to be only contingently true.
    • Kripke removed the concept of necessity away from epistemological concerns and simply asked whether a truth might have been false had the world been different. If it might, it’s a contingent truth, otherwise a necessary one. You can’t show a truth to be contingent by showing it to be known a posteriori.
    • According to Russell and “cluster theorists”, names get their references from people’s beliefs. So, on these accounts, “Hesperus” corresponds to (a preponderance of) people’s beliefs about Hesperus. Because beliefs about Hesperus and Phosphorus are such that, in some possible worlds, different things answer to “Hesperus” and to “Phosphorus”, the identity is contingent10.
    • Gibbard doesn’t repeat Kripke’s attacks on these theories of proper names. Even if these attacks succeed, there may remain some contingent identities (though not “Hesperus = Phosphorus”). However, he does now give an example (“Goliath = Lump1”) of a contingent identity. His claim is that Kripke has transformed but not eliminated the subject of contingent identity.
  2. Section I (The Identity of Statues)
    • Gibbard now returns to his statue. How might a statue be identical with its clay? Gibbard takes identity to be timeless and strict (the latter meaning “all properties in common”). One such property is that the identicals must start and stop existing at the same time as one another.
    • So, Gibbard needs persistence criteria11 for statues and for pieces of clay. He distinguishes between pieces and portions. Pieces are contiguous and cease to exist when scattered (broken up) or merged with other pieces. They are made up of portions, which continue to exist when scattered or aggregated.
    • A piece is also a lump, which is defined by the “sticking relation12”. Pieces are distinguished from portions of liquid and powder, and from heaps of solid objects, none of which involve being stuck together.
    • How should we define the persistence criteria of a piece? Gibbard’s first attempt is as follows:
      1. A piece of clay comes into existence when all parts of P (the portion of which it consists) stick to one another and to no other clay.
      2. This piece of clay ceases to exists when parts of it come off it or become stuck to other pieces.
    • Gibbard acknowledges that this is too strict a definition, and allows mitigants:
      1. Loss due to wear.
      2. Accretion of clay dust.
    • Note also that:
      1. Gibbard doesn’t think these issues are tricky, provided any change is gradual, and …
      2. He only seems to consider the clay13 in the piece.
    • So, Gibbard imagines a piece of clay as characterised by a function14, P: T → C, where T are instants of time and C are portions of clay, satisfying 4 conditions:
      1. The domain of the function is a contiguous interval of time
      2. The value of the function at time t is the portion P(t). All the parts of this portion are stuck together and not stuck to any particles of clay that aren’t part of this portion.
      3. Any change in P(t) with respect to time is at most slow.
      4. P isn’t embedded in some “larger” function (ie. one with a larger domain15, a longer-lasting portion).
    • Having defined what he means by a piece, Gibbard now moves on to defining persistence criteria for clay statues.
    • For statues, he’s dealing with tokens and not types. Two statues from the same mould are different statues. A particular statue requires both its shape and the piece of clay to define it. The persistence criteria of statues are combined from those for pieces and shapes. Gibbard defines the persistence of shape similarly to that of piece, ie. a shape starts when it’s made and persists until it changes, and allows the same caveat of “slow change” by wear, accretion or slight bending for the same shape to persist16.
    • Very importantly, Gibbard claims that he doesn’t need this set-up to be naturalistic (ie. to approximate to what we normally mean by statues and pieces) but can be purely stipulative17. However, he does make one important claim; namely, that pieces and statues are objects, with the usual logic of objects, and which can be designated by proper names.
    • So, are the piece of clay and the statue identical18? The usual answer is “no”, because they differ in their properties. Basically, these differences are usually temporal – the piece comes into existence before the statue, into which it is shaped.
    • However, by sticking two perfectly-formed half-statues together in an instant, and then subsequently smashing the statue in an instance, the piece and the statue persist over exactly the same interval of time. In this situation, Gibbard thinks that piece and statue are identical.
      His reasons for the above claim are that:
      1. Piece and statue started and ended their existence at the same time as one another.
      2. They shared the same properties.
      3. They took part in the same events.
    • If the statue is in some sense something over and above a piece of clay of a certain shape19, what is it20?
    • Gibbard now claims that the (presumed) identity of the statue and the piece of clay is contingent. He names his statue Goliath and his piece of clay Lump1, and plugs these names (admitting that it’s a bit odd to name a lump of clay) into the “contingent identity” formula at the start of this paper. Ie.:
      Goliath = Lump1 & ◇ (Goliath exists and Lump1 exists and Goliath ≠ Lump1)
    • So, how could this identity be contingent? Well, he could have squeezed Goliath (quickly) into a ball before it dried. Then Goliath would no longer exist, according to his strict definition of existence, but Lump1 still would. For Goliath = Lump1 we need identity over the lifetime of both, but here we wouldn’t have it. This is the whole point – the identity is contingent, because there are possible worlds in which Goliath ≠ Lump1 (though, in the actual world, Goliath = Lump1 because Gibbard didn’t squeeze it).
  3. Section II (Contingent Identities)
    • This “contingency” consequence of the identity of Goliath of Lump1 is very important in the light of Kripke’s accounts of identity. How are we, therefore, to justify Goliath = Lump1? It seems initially plausible, given that Goliath and Lump1 share all the same properties and events (as seen in the last Section21).
    • According to Gibbard, a statue is a temporal segment22 of a piece of clay. This gives a systematic account of the relation between statues and the clay of which they are made. As a special case23, Gibbard claims, we may have identity between the statue and its clay.
      1. Concrete Things
        • Now, as promised at the start of the paper, Gibbard gets round to giving an account of physical (concrete) things. He considers what the fundamental physical entities are that will provide a systematic physical account of statues and pieces of clay. He cites two possibilities:
          1. Point-instants (where Goliath = Lump1 iff they have the same set of point- instants).
          2. Particles (where a concrete thing might be a function from instants in time to sets of particles24).
        • Either way, concrete things can be given a place in a comprehensive view of the world.
      2. The plan for the Rest of the Paper
        • The aim of the rest of Gibbard’s paper is to:
          1. Provide a theory for why Goliath = Lump1, with concrete things being either sets of point-instants or slowly changing sets of particles.
          2. Develop a theory of proper names.
          3. Develop a theory of modal and dispositional properties for concrete things.
          4. Account for concrete things as sets of point-instants (Appendix).
        • We will only be looking at the first two of these aims.
  4. Section III (Proper Names)
    • So, how do proper names like “Goliath” and “Lump1” work? A consequence of Kripke’s account is that Goliath ≠ Lump1; Gibbard hopes to give an account of proper names at least as plausible as Kripke’s.
    • According to Kripke, proper names are used to talk of both actual and possible worlds, and are rigid designators. That is, if they denote anything at all in a possible world, they denote the same thing as they denote in the actual world.
    • Gibbard now considers the actual world (W0), in which Goliath isn’t squeezed, and a possible world (W1) in which it is. Then the consequence of Gibbard’s argument is that:
      1. In W0, Goliath = Lump1, while …
      2. In W1, Goliath ≠ Lump1.
      However, if “Goliath” is a rigid designator, this is a contradiction. This is because a rigid designator denotes the same thing in all possible worlds, and since both Goliath and Lump1 exist in W1 they must denote the same thing in W1 (given that they denote the same thing in W0). Hence (ii) must be false if “Goliath” is a rigid designator.
    • So, is “Goliath” a rigid designator? Well, “Goliath” is a rigid designator iff it refers to the same thing in every world in which it refers to anything.
    • In the actual world (W0), there is (according to Gibbard) a single thing which is both a statue and a lump of clay, and which Gibbard broke. In W1 there are two things (again according to Gibbard): Goliath, which is squeezed it into a ball (and allegedly squeezed out of existence) and Lump1 (which remains in existence after it’s squeezed. Which of these two things is the same thing in W1 as the one thing in W0?
    • Gibbard can’t make sense of this question25. He thinks we need to designate “qua X” the things we’re trying to identify across possible worlds, where “X” is “statue” or “lump of clay” in this case.
    • That is, he thinks it makes sense to ask about the “same statue” in different worlds, but not the “same thing”.
    • So, Gibbard thinks that proper names refer to things of a certain kind, and that we can define persistence criteria26 for these kinds.
    • On rare occasions, a thing will be of two different kinds, each of which will have different persistence criteria, and the thing will have two proper names, one for each kind.
    • In this case, the identity between the two things (?) is contingent. It’s truly an identity, because in W0 the two names designate the same thing, which ceases to exist at the same time under both criteria; but, it’s contingent because, in W1, the things designated by the two names cease to exist at different times (Goliath is a temporal segment of Lump1).
    • Consequently, a name isn’t (for Gibbard) a rigid designator (or not) all by itself. It’s only X-rigid, where “X” is a sortal27, representing the kind of thing it is.
    • Statues are special cases, because there are two kinds of X with respect to which they can be X-rigid.
    • Gibbard summarises: a proper name denotes a thing in W0 and “invokes” a sortal with certain persistence criteria. It then denotes the same sort of thing in every world in which it denotes at all.
    • Gibbard feels that he’s left with two questions:-
      1. How does a name acquire its reference in the actual world?
      2. What makes a thing in another world the same X-thing?
    • Answers
      1. What makes a thing in another world the same X-thing?
        • Taking the 2nd question first, it’s the origin of the statue that makes it the statue it is – that individuates it – whatever subsequently happens to it.
        • By way of further explanation, W1 branches from W0 when Goliath is squeezed. “Goliath” picks out the same statue in both worlds (because Goliath in W1 has exactly the same history before the branch as Goliath in W0), and “Lump1” picks out the same lump; but, in W0, Goliath = Lump1 whereas in W1, Goliath ≠ Lump1.
        • In general, the reference α of X in W (a possible world which branches from W0 after X comes into existence) is that thing which has the same history as X before the branch from W0 and which satisfies the persistence criteria28 satisfied by X in W0.
        • Gibbard therefore thinks that the reference of a name in W depends on:-
          1. The reference in the actual world (which determines the beginning of the thing denoted in W), and …
          2. The persistence criteria invoked (which enables us to choose between the various things initially selected by (a)).
        • Gibbard is inclined to deny that there’s any reference to concrete entities X in possible worlds W which either (1) don’t branch from W0 or (2) which branch too early (ie. before X begins29).
      2. How does a name acquire its reference in the actual world?
        • Gibbard now returns to the first of his two questions (how a name gets its reference in the actual world). He is impressed by Kripke’s account, which he considers consistent with his own.
        • According to Kripke, there’s a causal chain from the thing denoted to the speaker, the strongest link being the initial one between the thing and the person who first perceived and named it.
        • Gibbard thinks that persistence criteria play an important role in naming a thing, in that they define in what respect the thing ostensively named is named (say, as a statue or a lump).
        • This disambiguates the situation, in that there might be many things pointed to that might be denoted by the name (eg. a portion of clay which, unlike the piece of clay, would survive the destruction of the piece of clay30).
        • On Gibbard’s theory, it’s clear why Goliath = Lump1 is contingent, and also why Hesperus = Phosphorus is necessary.
        • The latter is the case because both Hesperus and Phosphorus are denoted qua- planets in worlds (where they refer at all) that branch after Venus begins to exist. Hence, “Hesperus = Phosphorus” is a necessary identity, because it holds in any possible world in which Hesperus and Phosphorus exist31.
    • Gibbard summarises his theory of proper names (on the assumption that Goliath = Lump1):-
      1. The reference of a thing in the actual world is determined in part by the persistence criteria which determine the thing named.
      2. The name is passed on by a tradition whose origin fixes the reference.
      3. This name can also be used to refer to objects in possible worlds that branch from the actual world after the thing named begins to exist.
      4. For this identification to give uniqueness, we need two conditions to be satisfied by the thing to be identified in the possible world:-
        1. It shares the same persistence criteria as the thing named in the actual world.
        2. It has early existence exactly like the name’s bearer in the actual world.
  5. Section IV (Possible Objections)
    • Gibbard now considers arguments in favour of Kripke’s theory that might be seen to count against his own.
    • Firstly, since Gibbard claims that identity across possible worlds makes no sense in the absence of a sortal, then neither does rigid designation.
    • Kripke denies this, in that he thinks qualms about rigid designators are unfounded, but Gibbard thinks he tacitly acknowledges the qua-sortal caveat.
    • For example, “Nixon” is a rigid designator because it designates the same man
      (not just thing) in all possible worlds in which Nixon exists32.
    • So, “Nixon” is a rigid designator only with respect to the sortal man. Kripke hasn’t shown that Nixon couldn’t have been a different entity from what he in fact was. But, we think only in terms of the same person33.
    • Kripke thinks we might also have qualms about cross-world identification if we are confused about what possible worlds are. They are not like distant planets in which people look like other people on our planet, so that we have to see whether this person was the same one or just resembled him. However, correctly understood, possible worlds are “counterfactual situations” in which we stipulate identity rather than discover it.
    • How does this apply to Gibbard’s clay statue? In W1 he has stipulated that Lump1 is brought into existence as Goliath (since both start at the same time, etc.), but Goliath is squeezed into a ball. This situation is fully stipulated and, according to Gibbard, there are two things stipulated – the statue and the lump of clay. So, Gibbard asks, which of these two things is the one thing that in the real world he made and broke34?
    • Gibbard thinks Kripke has a problem with the transworld identification of tables if they are viewed as collections of other particulars (molecules) rather than qualities. If something odd happens to the molecules of a table, we might have difficulty deciding if it’s the same table (even though it is a table). However, his quotations from Kripke are too opaque and decontextualized to evaluate.
    • What Gibbard does say about this situation is that it has no bearing on the case in point. Even if the molecules in Lump1 are clearly identified, there are still two things in W1 – Goliath, which is destroyed by squeezing, and Lump1, which survives the squeeze, and the question of identifying one of these with the one thing, Goliath, that was broken in W0 remains. Hence, there remains a genuine problem of transworld identification35.
  6. Section V (Leibniz’s Law)
    • Gibbard now comes to what he considers the most prominent objection to his account of the reference of proper names and the consequent thesis of contingent identity. This is the failure of Leibniz’s law. He thinks he has an answer to this problem, but only at a considerable cost, as we will see. He also has an answer to the cost, but we won’t see that as it’s too technical.
    • Leibniz’s law states that in the case of identity, x = y, x and y share all their properties and relations to other things.
    • This is the inspiration behind the objection that arises from the following argument:
      1. □ (Lump1 exists → Lump1 = Lump136)
      2. Goliath = Lump1 (contingently, ex hypothesi, in W0). Therefore, by substitutivity of identicals, …
      3. □ (Lump1 exists → Goliath = Lump1)
    • However, (3) is false according to Gibbard, as he takes the identity “Goliath = Lump1” to be contingent (true in W0 but false in W1).
    • Gibbard points out that, taken as a law of the substitutivity of identicals, Leibniz’s law is just false37.
    • Gibbard claims that Leibniz’s Law applies to this context only if a property is attributed by:-
      1. □ (Lump1 exists → ____ = Lump1)
    • Gibbard thinks that whether (438) attributes a property is just the point at issue, since properties apply to things irrespective of the way they are designated (which is what we’re talking about here – Gibbard is maintaining that if we replace the blank by Lump1 we get a truth, but we get a falsehood if we replace it by Goliath).
    • Gibbard thinks we’re in the familiar territory of Quine’s paper Reference and Modality39. Quine claims that (a) modal expressions don’t give properties of concrete things such as statues or pieces of clay and (b) that modal expressions don’t apply to concrete things independently of the way they are identified.
    • Gibbard unpacks this as follows. Lump1 is the same thing as Goliath, but necessary identity to Goliath isn’t a property that this thing has or lacks. This is because it makes no sense to ask whether that thing as such is necessarily identical to Lump1. Hence, Gibbard has an answer to the objection from Leibniz’s law because modal contexts don’t attribute properties or relations to concrete things.
      However, this answer comes at a price that some may consider too high. Quantificational contexts must attribute properties or relations to things that are true or false of them irrespective of how those things are designated. Hence, if modal contexts don’t attribute properties or relations to concrete things, it’s not possible to quantify in modal contexts where the variables include concrete things. Some quantified formulae will turn out to be ill-formed merely on account of the range of their quantifying variables.
    • Gibbard gives examples:
      1. ◇ (Lump1 exists and Goliath ≠ Lump1)
        is said to be well-formed, but …
      2. ◇ (Lump1 exists and x ≠ Lump1)
        is said to be ill-formed [if x can include Goliath40.
    • To understand this, Gibbard asks us to consider the statue he made and broke (but could have squeezed into a ball, though didn’t). Then (6) is true of that thing qua statue, but not of it qua clay. Consequently, the free variable x doesn’t belong to the context of (6) if it can take concrete things amongst its values.
      This gives power to the objection to contingent identity. We will be unable (it is said) to say many of the things we need to say in science and daily life if we have to restrict quantification in this way. Concrete things will have no modal properties – indeed, there will be no de re modality41 at all for concrete things.
  7. Remainder of Paper
    • Gibbard spends the rest of the paper showing to his satisfaction that our tongues are not tied in this way, and that we can say anything meaningful we want. He will adapt devices proposed by Carnap in Meaning and Necessity. There is still a price to pay, however, in that Carnap adopts a non-standard account of the way predicates and variables behave in modal contexts (in a similar way to Gibbard’s non-standard account of proper names).
    • On Carnap’s account, variables in modal contexts shift their range of values. So, in the formula:-
        ◇ (Lump1 exists and x ≠ Lump1)
      X doesn’t range over concrete things, but over “individual concepts”; so, over statue-concepts, rather than statues. This is similar to Frege’s treatment of proper names, which in modal contexts refer obliquely, not to (say) statues but to statue-concepts.
    • An individual-concept is a function from possible worlds to individuals, which respectively exist in each of these worlds.


APPENDIX – Questions42 (set by Guy Longworth)
  1. Q1. What claim does Gibbard attempt to argue for in the paper?
    • Gibbard’s claim is that Kripke, while having advanced the question of contingent identity by disentangling it from epistemological concerns, hasn’t shown that there can’t be such cases. Gibbard produces an example (a statue).
    • As a result, Kripke’s account of proper names as rigid designators needs supplementing. Gibbard thinks it doesn’t make sense to say that a name refers to the same thing in all possible worlds, but only to the same X-thing, where X is a sortal which states the kind of thing it is and is defined in terms of the persistence criteria of that type of thing.
  2. Q2. What is Gibbard’s argument for the claim that Lump1 and Goliath are contingently identical? Does the conclusion seem plausible?
    • Gibbard’s argument proceeds along the following lines.
      1. Careful definition of lumps and statues involving persistence criteria.
      2. Consideration of what would count as identity between the two.
      3. Construction of a special case in which the two are identical (Lump1 = Goliath).
      4. Consideration of a possible world in which the same two (according to Gibbard’s definitions) are not identical.
      5. QED.
    • Issues include:
      1. Defining things as time-segments
      2. Insufficient notice of radical change still allowing continuance of identity.
      3. Synchronic versus diachronic identity
      4. Identity of artefacts with their constituents, shape and events irrespective of ascription to them by people.
  3. Q3. In order for Gibbard’s argument to run, he needs it to follow from the fact that Goliath and Lump1 “run in step” in the actual world that they are actually identical. How does Gibbard argue for this? (See Section II).
    • In both Sections I & II he claims initial plausibility because:
      1. The piece and statue started and ended their existence at the same time as one another.
      2. They shared the same properties.
      3. They took part in the same events.
      He also asks - if the statue is in some sense something over and above a piece of clay of a certain shape, what is it?
    • In Section II he tries to provide a systematic account of the place in the physical world of concrete things (such as lumps of clay and statues). This may be OK for lumps, but it seems to miss out the role of artefacts as intentional objects, which is what makes them what they are (ie. over and above what they are physically constituted of).
  4. Q4. In section III, Gibbard argues that if Kripke is right about the functioning of proper names, Gibbard is wrong about contingent identity. What is his argument?
    • According to Kripke, proper names are used to talk of both actual and possible worlds, and are rigid designators. That is, if they denote anything at all in a possible world, they denote the same thing as they denote in the actual world.
    • Gibbard now considers the actual world (W0), in which Goliath isn’t squeezed, and a possible world (W1) in which it is. Then the consequence of Gibbard’s argument is that:
      1. In W0, Goliath = Lump1, while …
      2. In W1, Goliath ≠ Lump1.
    • However, if “Goliath” is a rigid designator, this is a contradiction. This is because a rigid designator denotes the same thing in all possible worlds, and since both Goliath and Lump1 exist in W1 they must denote the same thing in W1 (given that they denote the same thing in W0). Hence (ii) must be false if “Goliath” is a rigid designator.
  5. Q5. What account of the functioning of proper names does Gibbard think is compatible with his views on contingent identity?
    • Gibbard summarises his theory of proper names (on the assumption that Goliath = Lump1) as follows:-
      1. The reference of a thing in the actual world is determined in part by the persistence criteria which determine the thing named.
      2. The name is passed on by a tradition whose origin fixes the reference.
      3. This name can also be used to refer to objects in possible worlds that branch from the actual world after the thing named begins to exist.
      4. For this identification to give uniqueness, we need two conditions to be satisfied by the thing to be identified in the possible world:-
        1. It shares the same persistence criteria as the thing named in the actual world.
        2. It has early existence exactly like the name’s bearer in the actual world.



In-Page Footnotes ("Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity")

Footnote 7:
  • This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (04/04/2026 21:54:43).
  • Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 8:
  • Ie. in arguing for contingent identity, Gibbard is going to argue against Kripke’s view that identities are necessary; ie. true in all possible worlds. In the standard example, quoted later in this paper, Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus in all possible worlds in which both exist. We need to remind ourselves of the three dichotomies:-
    1. Necessary vs Contingent: Metaphysics
    2. A Priori vs A Posteriori: Epistemology
    3. Analytic vs Synthetic: Semantics
Footnote 9:
  • Gibbard is writing in 1975, soon after Kripke published the article Naming and Necessity. Rather irritatingly, page references are to the article in Semantics of Natural Language, rather than to Kripke’s book.
Footnote 10:
  • This is true (of beliefs) even under Kripke’s account of necessity, though not under his account of naming.
Footnote 11:
  • That is, what is it that makes a thing the same thing over time, and what defines when it comes into existence and goes out of existence.
Footnote 12:
  • “Being part of the same lump” or “being stuck together” are equivalence relations (being reflexive, transitive and symmetrical) and divide portions into equivalence classes, namely pieces or lumps).
Footnote 13:
  • Presumably for the sake of simplicity or clarity.
Footnote 14:
  • We need to be clear on what this function is. As it’s a function, it must be defined and single-valued throughout its domain; that is, there must be precisely one value P(t) for each t in the domain. Hence, the function doesn’t try to define which particles form part of the portion, but only at each instant of time which portion makes up the piece.
Footnote 15:
  • Larger ranges (“bigger pieces”) are excluded by (b).
Footnote 16:
  • One wonders whether this is subject to sorites or “Ship of Theseus” effects. Additionally, it seems to me that statues can be subject to very serious damage and still retain their identity – the Venus de Milo has remained the same statue despite losing its arms. By having very strict identity criteria, Gibbard seems to have trivialised the whole question.
Footnote 17:
  • This is a very important to dispute. However, it’s important to note is that Gibbard is trying to find one example of contingent identity, and if he can do this he’s proved his point that contingent identity exists. To do this, he can use idiosyncratic definitions, so that instead of talking about statues and pieces of clay, he’s talking about Σtatues and Πieces of Klay. If a Σtatue is only contingently identical to its Πiece of Klay, then he has proved his point. This would only fail (assuming the case for identity is sound) if such idiosyncratic definitions were incoherent or inconsistent with one another. We may have lots to quibble about if the argument is about statues and pieces of clay, but less if it is about Σtatues and Πieces of Klay. However, we may still consider that the question of contingent identity really rests on his definition of identity. If he’s talking about Jdentity, then we may lose interest.
Footnote 18:
  • Note that this identity has parallels in the philosophy of mind.
Footnote 19:
  • Ie. “that very piece of clay”.
Footnote 20:
  • Well, is there indeed! The question is, what makes a statue a statue, rather than some randomly formed lump of clay? This can be brought into clearer focus by considering a stone-age flint axe. When is a chipped flint an axe rather than a chipped flint (say, one knocked about in a riverbed). One is tempted to say that it’s an axe if the person who made it intended it as an axe, or even if the person who found it in the river never did anything with it other than put it in his spare axe cave, but who intended to use it as an axe had he not unfortunately got eaten by a sabre-tooth before he could do so. Or consider a Mars bar. This comes into existence at the same time as its lump of goo and lasts just as long as I restrain myself from taking the first bite. Hence, it’s a perfect match for Gibbard’s statue. But, say a malformed bar drops out of the machine through a perforation in the tube that has the Mars bar- forming nozzle on the end. This is only a Mars bar if I decide it is and take a bite. Hence, one can argue that there’s more to statues, flint axes and Mars bars that the stuff that makes them up and the events they undergo – in particular, ideas in peoples’ minds. We might extend the discussion beyond artefacts to natural kinds. Is a sheep more than its stuff and events irrespective of anyone ascribing sheepiness to it? No doubt this is a highly contentious issue. Whatever the result of this debate, Gibbard can be accused of skating over the issues.
Footnote 21:
  • The problem seems rather that the persistence criteria for Goliath are too strict. For persistence of persons, say, we’d need very much more liberal allowances for deformation. It seems clear to me that if I drop a statue and it breaks into 1,000 pieces, it remains the same statue (just as I remain the same person if I’m run over by a bus). It’s just a broken statue. If the statue is then repaired, it is still the same statue.
  • The problem may be due to equivocation between synchronic and diachronic identity. For two things to be identical at the same instant, they need all their properties in common. For something to be the same thing across time, it can change its properties very radically provided we have a story of continuous change (this is – paradoxes apart – the message of the “Ship of Theseus”). Gibbard is trying to compare two time-slices of things, where part way along, their properties change. His claim is that in the real world we have Goliath = Lump1, whereas in the possible world we don’t. Looking across the two worlds, Lump1Wa = Lump1Wp by Gibbard’s definition of the persistence of lumps. However, Goliathwa ≠ Goliathwp, by his definition of the persistence of statues. But, we can deny this inequality, using sensible persistence criteria for statues. The question is – could we utterly destroy the statue without destroying the lump. I think not. If he’d molded Goliath into a perfect sphere, and someone had asked “where’s Goliath”, we’d have pointed to that clay sphere.
  • But, now a different issue arises. If I break Goliath in half, Lump1 is destroyed (according to Gibbard). So, if I allow the persistence criteria for statues to be more liberal than Gibbard does, then it’s Goliath that persists, and we still have a case of contingent identity. It seems to be using persistence as part of the definition of a thing that causes the problem (tendentiously so-called).
Footnote 22:
  • This is the important issue. We have already imported into the definition of a thing its continuity conditions (Gibbard does this in a strict but vague way). We don’t usually do this (especially across possible worlds – though this is, of course, part of Gibbard’s point). There are usually two independent questions about identity:
    1. How does a thing remain the same over time?
    2. How do we identify the same thing across possible worlds.
    According to Kripke, as we will see, (2) is stipulated (by having the same origin) not discovered.
Footnote 23:
  • This, it seems to me, is where he goes wrong – the statue is always identical with its piece of clay at a point in time, however its shape changes – at least this is a common-sense use of “identical”. But, to account for maintained identity over time, we need to allow identity to persist despite change. Hence, we can’t compare two things across possible worlds and say they are not-identical because their properties differ, otherwise we could never explain diachronic identity within the actual world. Gibbard tries to contain the problem by his “gradual change allowed” caveats, but fails to see that identity persists despite rapid radical change provided we have a “continuity” story to tell.
Footnote 24:
  • Note that the range of the function is sets of particles, not particles (otherwise we wouldn’t have a function). This seems, incidentally, hopeless as an account of a concrete thing such as a statue, or even a lump, as there’s no account of shape or integrity.
Footnote 25:
  • Why is it a problem. Let’s suppose the squeezing takes place at time t in W1. Then, before t, both are picked out, and after t only the lump is (if you accept Gibbard’s continuity criteria). It’s only if we accept Gibbard’s “things as time-slices” approach that we have problems.
Footnote 26:
  • So, on Gibbard’s account it’s not meaningful to say that a prince turns into a frog and remains the prince (nor Heliogabalus into a swine, nor Nebuchadnezzar into an ox, and remain the same person; though the prince changing into a pauper is OK). Nor can we ask certain apparently meaningful counterfactuals, such as what if x had been a Y – there x is of kind X ≠ Y.
  • Also, does this commit Gibbard to the existence of natural kinds (and, is this a problem)?
Footnote 27:
  • This is a term that Strawson borrowed from Locke to denote a particularising property – a particular type of thing (like cat or table), instantiations of which can be counted (unlike mass properties, which apply to stuff rather than individuals).
Footnote 28:
  • Gibbard introduces “the set C” of persistence criteria, but this doesn’t seem to be important.
Footnote 29:
  • I’ve no idea why he’s troubled by the non-branching world (1). As for (2), it denies us the possibility of the counterfactual “if Goliath hadn’t been sculpted, it would have remained a lump of clay”.
Footnote 30:
  • Ie. we might be naming the clay qua-portion, rather than qua-piece. So, the situation isn’t quite as complex as Quine’s “gavagai” situation; though even in Gibbard’s example, the portion isn’t identical to the piece, since it starts differently.
Footnote 31:
  • Presumably this is true by the transitivity of identity (which Locke’s account of identity fails) – ie. “Hesperus = Venus” and “Venus = Phosphorus”, so “Hesperus = Phosphorus”.
Footnote 32:
  • Note: Scott Sturgeon’s comment that Kripke ought to say “at all possible worlds” rather than “in all possible worlds”, because in a world, Nixon might be called “Fluffy” and yet still be Nixon.
Footnote 33:
  • Gibbard says something confusing about our everyday intuitions being neither here nor there – what we need is a system, or something like that.
Footnote 34:
  • This question arises because, for Gibbard, in W0, Goliath = Lump1 whereas in W1, Goliath ≠ Lump1.
Footnote 35:
  • Is this a problem for Kripke, Gibbard or both?
Footnote 36:
  • It is necessarily the case that if Lump1 exists it is self-identical.
Footnote 37:
  • Intensional contexts are those in which the law of substitutivity of identicals fails (eg. Beliefs: “X believes that Hesperus is Hesperus” is true of any rational person X, but “X believes that Hesperus is Phosphorus” may be false of a rational but ignorant person), or that fail the test of existential generalisation (ie. that the objects of beliefs may not exist, not relevant here).
Footnote 38:
  • (4) presumably means “necessarily being identical with Lump1 in any world in which Lump1 exists”?
Footnote 39:
  • This seems to be little more than an argument from authority (or guilt by evil association, more likely), since the position assigned to Quine appears to be identical to Gibbard’s, without any elaboration.
Footnote 40:
  • (5) is OK because the sort of variable is fixed (it’s a statue) whereas in (6) it isn’t.
Footnote 41:
  • “De re” means “concerning a thing”, as distinct from “de dicto”, which means (approximately) “concerning a proposition”. An example of belief de re / de dicto from the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: “John believes his next-door neighbour is a Buddhist”. This is ambiguous. John may not know who his neighbour is but believes whoever lives next door is bound to be a Buddhist. This is a de dicto belief and is not about a particular individual. However, he may meet his neighbour at a party and deduce from the conversation that he’s a Buddhist, without knowing that he is his neighbour. This is de re belief, as it’s about an individual. An example from Tim Crane is the re dicto “Oedipus wanted to marry his mother”, which Oedipus would deny, as against the de re “Oedipus wanted to marry Jocasta”, which he would accept.
  • That said, I’m not too sure what Gibbard means when he says “there will be no de re modality at all for concrete things”.
Footnote 42:
  • These questions must have been set at a lecture back-up class when I was a 2nd-year undergraduate at Birkbeck back in 2002 or thereabouts.
  • I can’t remember anything of the ensuing tutorial I had with Guy to discuss my answers, other than a fruitless argument as to whether ‘Lump1’ was ‘Lump-one’, as I’d supposed, or ‘Lumple’ as Guy thought it was written! I couldn’t see why Gibbard would have spelled it ‘Lumpl’ if he intended ‘Lumple’, while Lump1 would distinguish this lump from others: Lump2, etc.
  • I admit that it’s probably printed ‘Lumpl’ (‘Lumple’) passim, but this might have been a typo that got into the literature.
  • A Google of the question prefers Lumpl, but several hits return Lump1, including an MPhil Thesis at St. Andrews (Li Kang - Coincidence and Modality) supervised by Katherine Hawley, which used Lump1 158 times.


"Heller (Mark) - Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader


Author’s Introduction
  1. Probably the best objection to there being so-called temporal parts is that no one has adequately made sense of what a temporal part is supposed to be.
  2. Such phrases as "temporal part", "temporal phase", and "temporal slice" have been used in ways that suggest such varied purported objects as processes, events, ways things are, sets, and portions of careers or histories.
  3. The account which comes closest to making sense of temporal parts is "Thomson (Judith Jarvis) - Parthood and Identity Across Time". Consider an object O which exists from time to to t3. On Thomson's account, a temporal part of O, call it P, is an object that comes into existence at some time t1 >= t0 and goes out of existence at some time t2 =< t3 and takes up some portion of the space that O takes up for all the time that P exists.
  4. Her account has the strength of being reasonably explicit about what she means by "temporal part". Furthermore, as she explains them, temporal parts do, at least on the face of it, seem to be parts. Her account, however, has the weakness of, as Thomson claims, making the existence of temporal parts fairly implausible.
  5. I shall offer an account which is at once explicit and supportive.

Paper Comment

For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File1.


"Howard-Snyder (Frances) - De Re Modality Entails De Re Vagueness"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader

Paper Comment


"Johnston (Mark) - Constitution is Not Identity"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader


Author’s Introduction
  1. Suppose that a statue1 of Goliath is made by fusing together two appropriately shaped pieces of clay and that after a few minutes, the artisan, frustrated with his work, dissolves the statue2 in a solvent which destroys clay and statue3 alike. Then a natural thing to say is that the careers of the statue4 and the lump or piece of clay which made it up are entirely coincident. The statue5 and the piece of clay came into being at the same time and ceased to be at the same time. Throughout their respective careers, the piece of clay constituted the statue6.
  2. Had the artisan despaired only of the arms and calves of Goliath and dissolved only them, replacing them with new pieces of appropriately molded clay, then we should say that distinct but not wholly distinct pieces of clay constituted the statue7 of Goliath over its lifetime. In this second case we naturally conclude that the statue8 is not absolutely identical with the whole piece of clay which originally constituted it, since the piece arguably did not survive the dissolving of significant parts of it, while the statue9 clearly did survive the dissolving; as is evidenced by the fact that the statue10 had new arms and calves attached to it.
  3. So also, it seems natural to conclude that even in the first case in which the original piece of clay constituted the statue11 throughout its entire career, the statue12 is not absolutely identical with the clay, since the statue13 could have survived certain changes which the piece of clay would not have survived, e.g. the changes described in the second case.
  4. Philosophers have gone to some lengths to resist this last conclusion. Thus David Lewis, Alan Gibbard, Anil Gupta and Denis Robinson all allege that something special about modal14 predication invalidates the argument to non-identity in the case of complete coincidence15. Concentrating on Lewis's way of putting the point, since it fits neatly into a familiar systematic way of thinking of modality16, the situation is supposed to be as follows17.
  5. …

Paper Comment



In-Page Footnotes ("Johnston (Mark) - Constitution is Not Identity")

Footnote 15: See Footnote 17: The remarks that follow are adapted from "Lewis (David) - Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies" (1971).


"Lewis (David) - Counterparts or Double Lives (Selections)"

Source: Lewis - On the Plurality of Worlds, 1986, Chapter 4


Comment
  1. The Selections are the whole1 of:-
    • 1. Good Questions and Bad, and
    • 5. Against Constancy
  2. There is also a useful footnote on the distinction between Genuine Modal2 Realism and Ersatz Modal3 Realism, presumably indebted to Chapter 3 ("Lewis (David) - Paradise on the Cheap?").

Paper Comment



In-Page Footnotes ("Lewis (David) - Counterparts or Double Lives (Selections)")

Footnote 1: So, the intervening sections:-
  • 2. Against Overlap
  • 3. Against Trans-World Individuals, and
  • 4. Against Haecceitism
are omitted.


"Myro (George) - Identity and Time"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader

Paper Comment

Included in "Look (Brandon C.) - The Metaphysics of Material Beings: Constitution, Persistence, and Identity".


"Parsons (Terence) - Entities Without Identity"

Source: Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 1, Metaphysics (1987), pp. 1-19


Author’s introduction
  • I want to begin by distinguishing two maxims regarding identity that are currently in favor among many philosophers. They are both commonly articulated by the slogan, "no entity without identity", but they are in fact distinct principles.
    1. The first is the view that we should not admit into our ontology entities for which we are unable to provide clear "criteria of identity".
    2. The second is the view that there can be no entity (no value of one's variables) to which the notion of identity fails to apply. In more positive terms, the second view is that the meaningfulness of even discussing things of a certain sort in- volves quantifying over them and counting them and refer- ring to them, and this is supposed to presuppose that each thing in question either be definitely the same as, or definitely different from, any arbitrarily chosen entity.
  • Clearly the possibility exists of the second maxim being satisfied- that identity always meaningfully applies in a definite manner to each pair of things under discussion-without the first one being satisfied. For the first one-the one that requires a criterion of identity-asks for a general and informative answer to the question "when are x and y the same?". Since we do not know a priori for every entity in the universe to which the notion of identity meaningfully applies whether there is some informative formulation of when that thing is or is not identical to something, the second maxim might be satisfied without our possessing "criteria of identity". In fact, I doubt whether we have criteria of identity for any interesting sorts of entity at all. But this is an issue that has been much discussed in the literature, and I have nothing particularly new to add on this occasion. Instead, I want to focus on the second maxim, in order to reject it as well. I want to explore the view that there can be entities to which identity sometimes fails to apply. I want to sketch a view according to which there is sometimes no answer to the question whether or not x and y are the same, and yet this does not deprive us of important uses of quantification, counting, and referring. (In some cases we are deprived of answers to questions about "how many" things there are; but in these cases we already know that there should be no answers.)

Paper Comment

For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File1.


"Rea (Michael) - Material Constitution: Preface, Introduction & Appendix (A Formal Statement of the Problem)"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader

Paper Comment

Included in "Look (Brandon C.) - The Metaphysics of Material Beings: Constitution, Persistence, and Identity".


"Sosa (Ernest) - Subjects Among Other Things"

Source: Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 1, Metaphysics (1987), pp. 155-189


Analytical Table of Contents
  1. Body and Soul. Arguments by Hume and by Locke and Kant against substantial souls considered and resisted.
  2. Against Souls. Further arguments against souls:
    1. The argument from individuation1.
    2. The intrinsic nature problem.
    3. The argument from causation2.
  3. Might Souls be Located in Space? This seems the most promising way to deal with the problems of B, but is not free of cost: for one thing, souls would then seem essentially spatial since spatial and fundamental, and further puzzles about the dynamics of souls would still call for the attribution to souls of special intrinsic properties or relations, though we have no clue as to the content of these.
  4. Radical Materialism. This loses much appeal with the realization that nothing material could be ontologically fundamental. If we allow real status to the materially derivative, it seems arbitrary to rule out objects that though immaterial are no more derivative; all the more so if in each case the mode of derivation is equally well understood. So it seems ill- advised and unnecessary to strain against the immaterial, or at least against that which is sufficiently meta-material (metaphysical?) to be distinct from the chunk of material that constitutes it at that time.
  5. On the Constitution of Ordinary Objects. A broadly Aristotelian conception of everyday reality is sketched. Ordinary objects are viewed as ontologically derivative from constitutive matter(s) and constitutive form.
  6. Some Principles of Ontological Dependence. These explain how the existence, identity, and persistence of objects derive from their matter and form.
  7. Modal3 Properties of the Supervenient and Their Basis in Actuality. Problems in understanding what actual (non-modal)4 intrinsic character of an ontologically supervenient or dependent entity (like a smile, a snowball, or perhaps even a person) could possibly yield and explain its differential modal5 properties, its could-bes, might-have-beens, etc.
  8. Further Problems of Constitution and Supervenience6.
    1. The explosion of reality. (And the anti-realist proposed solution.)
    2. Which original sources are essential?
  9. An Event or Process Ontology7? Given the problems surveyed, should we not yield to the implicit pressure of the arguments by Hume, Locke, and Kant (sketched in section A) by accepting an ontology of events and processes, one that dispenses with concrete, contingent substances having any permanence? It is not obvious we should accede, when the plausible reducing events and processes themselves embed substantial things with apparent permanence (beyond an instant at least). What is more, the events and processes in a thing's actual career will not suffice for the reduction anyhow, since ordinary things generally might have had very different careers.
  10. Persons Again. If we decide against substantial souls, against radical materialism, and against an event or process ontology, then a broadly Aristotelian view of persons has its attractions. But it will have the problems already presented in sections G and H. It must also deal with some further questions, six of which are highlighted in this section. And how would experiential and intentional states derive from properties of the live human being? The mystery here darkens when we consider that properties of the human being necessarily derive from properties and relations of its physical parts. No simple analogy between digestion and thought is likely to illuminate this darkness.

Paper Comment

For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File8.


"Thomson (Judith Jarvis) - Parthood and Identity Across Time"

Source: Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne) - Persistence : Contemporary Readings


Author’s Introduction (extracts)
  1. Temporal parts have come in handy in a number of areas in philosophy.
  2. Let us take a close look at one use to which some may be inclined to want to put them.
  3. It is an attractive idea that the logic of parthood is the Leonard-Goodman Calculus of Individuals:-

Paper Comment

For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File1.


"Unger (Peter) - I Do Not Exist"

Source: MacDonald - Perception & Identity - Essays Presented to A J Ayer with His Replies, 1979


Philosophers Index Abstract
  1. It is argued that none of the "ordinary entities" that ostensibly exist actually do exist: there are no planets, or rocks, or chairs, or cats, or people; there is no you and no me.
  2. The arguments are variations upon the ancient argument of the heap, the sorites1.
  3. Various objections to the arguments are considered.
  4. The apparently self-defeating character of the arguments is recognized but is not taken as fundamental to the issues.

Paper Comment

Also in "Rea (Michael), Ed. - Material Constitution - A Reader"


"Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Constitution: Foreword"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader

Paper Comment


"Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts"

Source: Van Inwagen - Ontology, Identity and Modality, Part II: Identity, Chapter 5, 1981


Author’s Introduction1
  1. Many philosophers accept what I shall call the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts (DAUP). Adherents of this doctrine believe in such objects as the northern half of the Eiffel Tower, the middle two-thirds of the cigar Uncle Henry is smoking, and the thousands (at least) of overlapping perfect duplicates2 of Michelangelo’s David that were hidden inside the block of marble from which (as they see it) Michelangelo liberated the David. Moreover, they do not believe in only some "undetached parts"; they believe, so to speak, in all of them. The following statement of DAUP, though it is imperfect in some respects, at least captures the generality of the doctrine I mean to denote by that name:
      For every material object M, if R is the region of space occupied by M at time t, and if sub-R is any occupiable sub-region of R whatever, there exists a material object that occupies the region sub-R at t.
    (It should be obvious that DAUP, so defined, entails the existence of the northern half of the Eiffel Tower3 and the other items in the above list.) This definition or statement or whatever it is of DAUP has, as I have said, certain imperfections as a statement of the doctrine I wish to describe certain philosophers as holding. One was mentioned in (the previous) footnote. Another is this: there are philosophers who hold what is recognizable as a version of DAUP who would not be willing to admit regions of space into their ontologies. Here is a third: this statement entails that material objects have boundaries so sharp that they occupy regions that are sets of points; and no adherent of DAUP that I know of would accept such a thesis about material objects. But these defects are irrelevant to the points that will be raised in the sequel and I shall not attempt to formulate a statement of DAUP that remedies them. For our purposes, therefore, DAUP may be identified with my imperfect statement of it.
  2. What I want to say about DAUP involves only two components of that doctrine;
    1. The arbitrariness of the parts - a part of an object is of course an object that occupies a sub-region of the region occupied by that object - whose existence it asserts (". . . any occupiable sub-region of R whatever . . .") and
    2. The concreteness and materiality of these parts.
    The second of these features calls for a brief comment. A philosopher might hold that, e.g., the northern half of the Eiffel Tower exists, but identify this item in his ontology with some abstract object, such as the pair whose first term is the Eiffel Tower and whose second term is the northern half of the region of space occupied by the Eiffel Tower. (If this idea were to be applied to moving, flexible objects or to objects that grow or shrink, it would have to be radically elaborated; I mean only to provide a vague, general picture of how one might identify parts with abstract objects.) This paper is not addressed to that philosopher's doctrine. It is addressed to DAUP, which holds that, e.g., the northern half of the Eiffel Tower is a concrete material particular in the same sense as that in which the Eiffel Tower itself is a concrete material particular.
  3. The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts is false. It is also mischievous: it has caused a great deal of confusion in our thinking about material objects. But I shall not attempt to show that it is mischievous. I shall be content to show that it is false.

Paper Comment



In-Page Footnotes ("Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts")

Footnote 1: Most footnotes omitted.

Footnote 3:
  • More precisely: DAUP entails that, for any time t, if the Eiffel Tower exists at t, and if the northern half of the space it occupies at t is then occupiable - and I think no one would want to deny that — then there exists an object at t that occupies that space, an object it would certainly be natural to call "the northern half of the Eiffel Tower."
  • There is a thesis that DAUP intuitively "ought" to entail that my statement of it does not entail. Consider two times t and t'. Suppose that the Eiffel Tower exists and has the same location and orientation in space at both these times. Suppose that at both these times it consists of the same girders, struts, and rivets, arranged in the same way. The thesis: the thing that is the northern half of the Eiffel Tower at t is identical with the thing that is the northern half of the Eiffel Tower at t'.
  • I regard the failure of my statement of DAUP to entail this thesis as a defect in that statement. (I think this entailment fails to hold. It certainly cannot be shown formally to hold. For all I know, however, there may be some feature of the concept of a material object in virtue of which it does hold.)


"Wiggins (David) - On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time"

Source: Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader


Author’s Abstract1
  1. (This paper) considers the possibility or impossibility of the co-occupation by distinct things of the same place at the same time.
  2. It lays particular emphasis upon the distinction between a proper substance and an aggregation of material components.

Notes
  1. S is the principle2 that “Two things cannot completely occupy the same place / volume / sub-volume at the same time”.
  2. Apparent exceptions that are fairly easy to explain3 include:-
    • Proper Parts: My forearm only partly4 occupies the volume occupied by my body. The apparent exception “doesn’t count”.
    • Sponges: The point is to “mingle” two things – in this case a sponge and a body of water – and then to recover them both afterwards. The things have to persist, or we can’t say they are two things5 in the same place at the same time. Wiggins also considers (nomologically counterfactual) mingling as the atomic and subatomic level6. This “doesn’t count” either.
  3. Wiggins thinks he can resolve but one of the “difficult” questions arising from all this, but S is still inadequately formulated.
  4. The “is” of Constitution: Wiggins considers a tree7 (T) and its constituent matter (W). T and W occupy the same place at the same time, but are non-identical – because of Leibniz’s Law and the fact that they have different persistence conditions8.
    • W survives T’s decomposition into cellulose molecules, while T does not.
    • T survives the loss of some of the constituent cells of W, in the course of organic change, while W does not.
  5. Wiggins thinks it’d be a “trick” to define an aggregate W1 with persistence9 conditions exactly the same as the tree’s. A trick because all you’ve done is define a tree.
  6. Wiggins spells this out: we have “contrived” an identity between stuff (W) and substance (T) by introducing a concept foreign to things falling under the “stuff” category – namely organisation.
  7. Wiggins has a footnote saying that more can be said about identity and the mereological treatment of aggregates – and refers us to "Wiggins (David) - Identity & Spatio-temporal Continuity", pp. 11-13, 67-8, 7210.
  8. Wiggins has an excellent footnote11 illustrating – for artefacts – the difference between the stuff and the artefact from which the stuff is made. He proves, by transitivity, that the artefact cannot be identical to its stuff – in this case sweater, wool and socks – since the sweater is not identical to the socks, neither can be identical to the wool from which – at different times – they were made. The stuff (wool) must pre-exist the fabrication of the artefact, but the artefact cannot pre-exist its fabrication.
  9. However, he goes on to argue that none of this implies that T is something over and above W. His definition of over and above is open to objection12, in that he wants it to mean merely that there are no (material) parts of T that are not in W, or as he says, W fully exhausts13 the matter of T.
  10. Wiggins’s understanding of constitution14 includes:-
    • The “is” of material constitution is not the “is” of identity.
    • “x is constituted of y” is equivalent to:-
      … “x is made of y”, or
      … “x consists of y”, or
      … “x is wholly composed of y”, or
      … “x is merely y”, or
      … “x merely consists of y”.
  11. Wiggins notes that if T = W is a consequence of materialism15, then Wiggins is not a materialist16, as he denies this equation.
  12. Wiggins claims that his denial that T=W only puts an uninteresting17 obstacle in the way of reducing18 botany to organic chemistry.
  13. Wiggins leaves T & W with the remark that what he’s shown is similar to a philosophical commonplace of assigning objects to different logical types. He prefers his approach, however, because it makes a smaller claims (he says) for two reasons:-
    • 1. It allows for a clear statement of the connection between objects and their constituting stuff, and
    • 2. The Leibnizian principle for the predicative “is” (as opposed to the constitutive “is”) is highly intelligible19
      If and only if A is an f (or is phi) then A is identical with an f (or with one of the phi-things); and if and only if A is one of the f's (or phi-things) then it must share all its properties with that f (or phi-thing).
  14. There is more to be said on the topic of “ranges of significance” – we’re referred to Russell’s simple or ramified Theory of Types20.
  15. The lesson from T & W is that we need to reformulate principle S as S*, namely
      S*: No two things of the same kind can occupy the same volume at exactly the same time
  16. Wiggins’s gloss on kind is “… satisfy (the same) sortal21 or substance concept”.
  17. He thinks there are at least three reasons for thinking this a necessary truth:-
    • 1. Space can be mapped only by its occupants.
    • 2.
    • 3.
  18. "Wiggins (David) & Woods (Michael J.) - Symposium: The Individuation of Things and Places"
  19. Wiggins closes with an application of principle S* to the problem of Tib and Tibbles22. He attributes the puzzle to William of Sherwood, via Geach23
  20. … to be completed.

Paper Comment

For the full text, follow this link (Local website only): PDF File24.



In-Page Footnotes ("Wiggins (David) - On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time")

Footnote 1: Footnote 2: It is something of an open question whether S is a physical or metaphysical question. Wiggins subsequently considers counterfactual physical circumstances which would allow indefinitely fine commingling of two distinct things, but this still leaves him thinking there’s a problem to solve. So, he thinks there’s an a priori metaphysical issue at stake.

Footnote 3: What’s the compulsion to believe S? Worries often have to do with language (how would our counting work – or else various epistemological claims; these are Olson’s worries about persons and animals occupying the same place at the same time), but the worries ought to run deeper than this.

Footnote 4: The conundrums of Dion / Theon and Tib / Tibbles are relevant here.

Footnote 5: Is there an issue caused by the supposed possibility of intermittent existence?

Footnote 6: Something like the case of miscible fluids would only take us to the molecular level – but at least that’s further than sponges.

Footnote 7: A change from “the statue and the clay” (See Goliath and Lump1 in "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity", etc.) – and better, since artefacts might be a special case where human concerns and arbitrariness muddy the waters.

Footnote 9: I’d thought of aggregates having less strict persistence conditions than those demanded by mereological essentialism – a heap that has lost a grain is still the same heap – but Wiggins picks up on this. That said, his “take” is an extreme one for the sake of argument, but you could define persistence conditions for aggregates that didn’t mirror those of organic objects, and that were, therefore, less contrived.

Footnote 10: Footnote 11:
  • There are obvious connections to the Ship of Thesesus paradox (Click here for Note) here: we could repair the sweater over time, and save the replaced threads, and make socks out of them.
  • This is interesting – there’s no temptation to paradox in this case (as socks can’t be identical to a sweater) – but if we made the threads into another sweater, the paradox would return.
  • This, I think, shows that the stuff returns to the universal pool of stuff, and carries no memory of its previous form with it.
  • Yet we’re still left with disassembled and reassembled watches, bicycles etc. Yet they aren’t disassembled into stuff, but into parts, which retain part of the form of the artefact.
  • So, the question is whether the material that makes ships and sweaters are parts or stuff. It would seem that pieces of wool have no relevant form, while planks of wood do – or might. Some planks will be interchangeable, while others are specific to function. Watch and bicycle parts, however, are very specific to place and function.
Footnote 12:
  • I think the disagreement is only semantic. It’s common sense that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”, but Wiggins doesn’t want to deny this. He’s simply speaking mereologically.
  • The parts of the whole either support one another (as in the proverb) or else have form or structure.
  • This structure may explain the suggestion that the heap of sand in my garden has different persistence conditions to a mere aggregate (which – one presumes – has mereologically essentialist persistence conditions – as does a set).
Footnote 13:
  • I’m uncomfortable about this. If (counterfactually) we had immaterial souls, then we would – according to normal parlance – be something “over and above” the matter that constitutes our bodies, yet the matter under consideration (that of our bodies) would be “exhausted” – no more is needed.
  • Also, Wiggins takes it that T is “nothing over and above” W if T is constituted of W and nothing else. Yet, form is very important. Are diamonds “nothing over and above” the carbon atoms that constitute them? Would Wiggins say “yes”?
Footnote 16: I find this paragraph very difficult to construe. I repeat it here for reference:-
    If it is a materialistic thesis that T = W, then my denial that T = W is a form of denial of materialism. It is interesting how very uninteresting an obstacle these Leibnizian difficulties-real though they are-put in the way of the reduction of botany and all its primitive terms to organic chemistry or to physics. (If it does not follow from T # W that trees are something over and above their matter, how much the less can it follow that they are immanent or transcendent or supervenient or immaterial beings. This is obviously absurd for trees. A Leibnizian disproof of strict identity could never be enough to show something so intriguing or obscure.) I should expect there to be equally valid, and from the point of view of ontology almost equally unexciting, difficulties in the reduction of persons to flesh and bones ("Wiggins (David) - Identity & Spatio-temporal Continuity", p. 57), in psychophysical event-materialism, and in the materialisms which one might formulate in other categories (such as the Aristotelian categories property and state or the categories situation and fact). Over and above is one question, identity is another. But of course the only stuff there is is stuff.
Footnote 17: What does he mean by this? That the obstacle is illusory?

Footnote 19: This seems to be a restatement of Leibniz’s Law in sortal terms.

Footnote 20: Presumably, this survives Russell’s failure to reduce mathematics to logic. Wiggins gives the following references:- Footnote 23: He thanks Geach for allowing him to use the material, but gives no reference. For some reason, he doesn’t mention the ancient Dion and Theon, which is of exactly the same form as Tib and Tibbles.


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