Photos

I've put up some photos from the recent Structure in Metaphysics workshop. I'm also happy to be able to prove that I hung out at the APA with one of the great philosophical minds (oh yeah, and Kris McDaniel also).

Parsimony and the fundamental

In his APA comments on Jonathan Schaffer, Ross asks about some of Jonathan's ideas about the applicability of Ockham's razor. The question arises if you buy into some robust distinction between "fundamental" and "derivative" existents. Candidate fundamental existents: quarks, electrons, maybe organisms (or maybe just THE WORLD). Candidate derivative existents: weirdo fusions, impure sets, maybe tables and chairs (or maybe everything except THE WORLD).

Let's call the idea that "derivative" as well as "fundamental" entities are (thump table) existing things the expansivist interpretation of the fundamental/derivative distinction. Call the idea that only the fundamental (thump table) exists the restrictivist interpretation of that distinction.

Jonathan's position is that Ockham's razor, rightly understood, tells us to minimize the number of fundamental entities. Ross's idea (I think?) is that this is right iff one has a restrictivist understanding of the fundamental/derivative distinction. But Jonathan, pretty clearly, has an expansivist understanding of that distinction: he doesn't want to say that the only thing that (thump table) exists is the world, just that the world is ontologically prior to everything else. So if Ross is right, his application of parsimony is in trouble.

I can see what the idea is here: after all, understanding parsimony as the instruction to minimize (thump table) existents or to minimize the (thump table) kinds of existents is surely close to the traditional understanding. Whereas the idea that we need only minimize (kinds of) existents of such-and-such a type, seems to come a bit out of the blue, and at minimum we need some more explanation before we could accept that revision to our theoretical maxims.

However... One thing that seems important is to consider what sort of principles of parsimony might be present in more ordinary theorizing (e.g. in the special sciences). The appeal of appealing to parsimony in metaphysics is in large part that it's a general theoretical virtue, applicable in all sorts of areas that are paradigms of good, productive fields of inquiry. Now, theoretical virtues in the sciences is not a topic that I'm in a position to speak with authority on. But one thing that seems to me important in this connection: if you think that the entities of special sciences aren't fundamental entities, then principles of parsimony restricted to the fundamentals aren't going to be in a position to give you much bite. (NB: I think that this was raised by someone in comments on Jonathan's paper in Boise, but I can't remember who it was...).

If that's right, then whether you're an expansivist or a restrictivist about the fundamental/derivative distinction seems beside the point. Any theorist who gives a story about what the fundamentals are that's unconstrained by what the special sciences say, is going to be in trouble with the idea that principles of parsimony should be restricted to constraints on fundamental existents: for such principles of parsimony won't then be able to get much bite on theorizing in the special sciences. I'd like to think that quarks, leptons etc are going to populate the fundamental, rather than Jonathan's WORLD. This point bites me as much as Jonathan.

There's plenty of room for further discussion here, particularly the interaction of the above with what you take to be evidence for some entities being fundamental. E.g. if you thought that various types of emergentism in special science would be evidence for "higher level" fundamental entities, then maybe the above parsimony principle would still have application to special sciences: it'd tell you to reduce to the number of emergent entities you postulate (i.e. it'd be a methodological imperative towards reductionism).

Also, it seems to me that there is something to the thought that some entities are simply "don't cares" when applying parsimony principles. If I'm concerned with theorizing about the behaviour of various beetles in front of me, I care about how many kinds of beetles my theory is giving me, but not with how many kinds of mathematical entities I need to invoke in formulating that theory. Now, maybe that differential attitude can be explained away by pointing to the generality of the mathematica involved (e.g. that total science is "already committed to them"). But one natural take would be to look for restrictions to principles of parsimony/Ockham's razor, making them sensitive to the subject-matter under investigation.

To speculate wildly: If principles of parsimony do need to be sensitized in this way, and if the study of what fundamentally exists is a genuine investigation, maybe the principle of parsimony, in application to that study, really would tell us to minimize the number of, and kinds of, fundamental entities we posit.

Paper changes

I've made changes to a couple of my papers that I'd welcome comments on. Firstly, I realised at the APA that I was saying some completely false things regarding the individuation of sums in my paper on fundamentality. I now hope I'm saying true things. The changed section is section 4 - the stuff concerning necessary connections and whether they're unobjectionable if the things in question overlap.

I've also made an addition to my paper on the Contingency of Composition. I have always argued that composition as identity is compatible with restricted composition and I've needed to say something about Merricks' argument to the contrary. Merricks relies on the necessity of identity, and I've previously been happy simply to play the counterpart theory card and reject this. But on further reflection I think I can show that you shouldn't accept Merricks' argument even if you accept the standard Barcan/Kripke proof of the necessity of identity. The final version of this paper has to be sent off soon, so if anyone had any comments on my response to Merricks here I'd appreciate them.

On another note. As I understand it, women are under-represented in the major journals (I mean, even given their under-representation in the profession - that is, woman are even more under-represented in the journals than you'd expect them to be, given how many women there are in the profession). Why is this? Well, we'd need a study on this, but the following seems likely to me. Since women are under-represented in the profession it is very likely, for every paper sent to a journal, that it will be refereed by a man. Men and women vary in their styles of writing and arguing. So while when a man submits a paper it is likely that it will be reveiwed by someone who writes and argues in a broadly similar style, with women this is very unlikely. Hence, women face a disadvantage in trying to get papers published.

Okay - it's hardly likely to be that simple. But I bet there's something to this. And if there's some truth to this then there's a good case to be made, it seems to me, for journals implementing the rule that papers by women should, other things being equal, be reveiwed by women. (The 'other things' packs in a lot, because it seems far more important that papers be reveiwed by experts in the subject.) Is there a good reason why this shouldn't happen?

APA post mortem

Elizabeth and I are back in the Old Country after an extremely enjoyable trip to the San Francisco APA. San Francisco is an awesome city! I was responding to Jonathan Schaffer on ‘The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker’ and the session seemed to go really well (my comments are below). Other highlights, for me, included the ‘author meets critics’ session on Hud Hudson’s The metaphysics of Hyperspace (there was a particularly illuminating debate between Hud and Josh Parsons on primitive location relations), Joshua Spencer’s talk on extended simples (Joshua provides further evidence – as if Kris McDaniel, Ryan Wasserman and Shieva Kleinschmidt weren’t enough – of the excellence of the best of the WWU students), and Alyssa Ney’s paper on causation. And there were plenty of other interesting looking sessions that I didn’t get to go to because of scheduling clashes (i.e. I wanted to go to the golden gate bridge). Leeds made a good showing: as well as me and Elizabeth, CMM’s own Robbie and Andy were there, as were Leeds ethicist Ulrike Heuer, and ex-Leeds head of department Mark Nelson. There was also a reunion of the Arche old guard, since Roy Cook, Agustin Rayo and Josh Parsons were all there.

The biggest problem was a common one: chairs not chairing! It was extremely rare, at least in my experience, for a chair to tell someone there was no more time for their question, or even to hurry up and get to the point; it was as if the only point of a chair is to keep track of who wants to ask questions. This is pretty common, it seems to me; and it’s not a good thing. Chairs should rule with an iron fist. I appreciate that’s not easy for everyone to do (“I’m sorry Professor Kripke, I don’t think you’re going anywhere with this, we’ll have to move on . . .”) but it’s worth us as a community working to establish a firmer line on chairing. The speaker and the questioner are not always in the best position to decide whether a point is worth pursuing – whether or not, for example, they’re simply talking past one another; we need chairs familiar with the debate who are willing to move the discussion on if necessary. The BSPC was a perfect example of how to do things. Chairs were issued with firm chairing guidelines, and the first session was chaired by one of the organisers to lead the way. And it worked really well – when the chair intervened on questions everyone knew they were just following the rules and there wasn’t any resentment (as far as I could tell). That’s obviously going to be harder to enforce at bigger conferences; but not impossible, and it’s worth the effort.

And now, for anyone who’s interested, here are the comments I made to Schaffer. I didn’t read these out, but they approximate what I said.

Jonathan claims simplicity as a virtue of his theory. But is his theory really ontologically parsimonious? Sure, Jonathan only has one truthmaker as opposed to, e.g., Armstrong’s many, many truthmakers; but the theories may be identical as to what they claim exists. Suppose I tell you that this chair has the property of being the universal wife: it is the thing that any man is married to, if they are not married to any woman. Why should you believe me? Economy – we minimise the number of bachelors in the world! That won’t convince anyone, of course: there’s no theoretical benefit in minimising the number of bachelors if doing so doesn’t minimise the number of entities we are committed to. Why should I minimise the number of truthmakers then? Jonathan and I might agree exactly on what there is – we just disagree on what, among those things, play a truthmaking role. If so, in the absence of further explanation, I don’t see why I should concede that Jonathan’s view has the benefit of parsimony.

As always, of course, there’s more to be said. Perhaps the principle that is guiding Jonathan is ‘minimise the number of fundamental entities’. In that case, given Jonathan’s claim that truthmakers must be fundamental, which I’ll grant for the moment, it will follow that we should minimise the number of truthmakers.

But why should I minimise the number of fundamental entities? Again, unless there’s more to be said this looks just like the case above: Jonathan and I can agree exactly on what there is, we just disagree about which, among those things, has the property of fundamentality – and it’s not clear why thinking fewer things have this property is a theoretical benefit.

Perhaps it’s because only the fundamental is real. If the derivative entities are unreal – if we don’t occur any genuine ontological commitment by believing in the derivative – then it’s reasonable to assume that when Ockham’s razor tells us to minimise entities it means the fundamental, real, entities.

I don’t think of fundamentality that way: I think of the ‘fundamental/derivative’ relation as holding between equally real entities; but opinion differs here. But if Jonathan takes this route I think it weakens his case for the priority monism that lies behind his truthmaker theory. Jonathan is keen to distinguish his monism from what we might call numerical monism: the claim that only one thing exists. Many are willing to dismiss the latter monistic theory because of the violence it does to common sense intuitions: namely, that it denies that you and I exist, or that the tables and chairs here exist, etc. Jonathan points out that such objections don’t touch his theory: he does believe in you and I and in the tables and chairs – he simply doesn’t think they’re fundamental. But if Jonathan thinks that you and I don’t really exist this response seems somewhat weakened. The intuition against monism is that we exist, dammit! To find out that it’s okay to talk about us, even though we’re unreal, hardly sweetens the pill! I pose Jonathan a dilemma then: either there is genuine ontological commitment to the derivative or there isn’t. If there is, then it is not clear to me that I should concede him parsimony. If there isn’t, then, while I grant him parsimony, I think he incurs a serious cost in going against common sense intuition.

Also, I granted for the sake of argument Jonathan’s claim that truthmakers must be fundamental, but I don’t actually believe that. I think the truthmaker for , for example, is the redness of the chair (a trope); but I do not think this trope is fundamental – I think it is dependent on the chair.

When arguing for the fundamentality of truthmakers Jonathan says “The truth of propositions is not fundamental, and so needs grounding. But if the truthmakers are not themselves fundamental, then the ground has not been reached.”

I think there is an equivocation on ‘ground’ here. I think there are two distinct grounding relations: the relation between a true proposition and its truthmaker, and the relation between a dependent entity and that which it is dependent on: the existence of a truthmaker necessitates the truth of that which it makes true, but for ontological dependence the necessitation goes the other way – the existence of the dependence necessitates the existence of that which it is dependent on. Jonathan thinks it is the same relation. In correspondence he proposed the following reduction of truthmaking to ontological dependence:

(*) A makes p true iff the truth of p is ontologically dependent on A.

Okay, so now we’re believing in ‘the truth of p’ – a particularised verity belonging to a proposition? That’s not something I believe in, so again I’m brought back to asking: is Jonathan’s theory really economical? Jonathan can say ‘Yes, because I only recognise an ontological commitment to the fundamental, and the truth of p is derivative’. But I can’t help but feel that the cards are being stacked too highly in Jonathan’s favour from the outset: he can appeal to anything he likes that will help him out and not face any charges of ontological profligacy because he only ever recognises commitment to one thing: the world.

Let me end by wondering whether Jonathan really has slain the dragon of negative facts. Jonathan rightly says that any theory according to which the number of truthmakers is a necessary truth will slay the dragon. Once we know what the n truthmakers are we know that is false, because there would have to be another truthmaker were it true, and we know that there aren’t any others, because there have to be exactly n. Since Jonathan’s theory says that there is, necessarily, exactly one truthmaker, then it slays the dragon.

But Jonathan’s justification for thinking that there is necessarily exactly one truthmaker relies on his view that priority monism is not just true but necessarily true. I am more attracted to the view that such claims are contingent truths: that whether the dependence relation goes from part to whole or vice-versa varies from world to world.

I won’t say too much about that here, although I will say that I take the burden of proof always to be on he who sees necessity over he who sees contingency. But also, consider one of Jonathan’s arguments for priority monism. If the whole is dependent on the parts, says Jonathan, the world couldn’t be gunky, for then dependence would never ‘bottom out’. Since gunk is possible, then, priority monism is true. I agree that the whole couldn’t be dependent on the parts in a gunky world. But for the same reasons, the parts can’t be dependent on the whole in an ‘anti-gunky’ world: a world where everything is a proper part of some thing. I don’t see the possibility of gunk being on a stronger footing than the possibility of anti-gunk, so I think this is as good an argument for priority pluralism as the previous argument was for priority monism. The conclusion I take is that priority pluralism and priority monism are both possible, and that what is true depends on the contingent mereological facts concerning the actual world. But in that case, even if priority monism is actually true, and there is actually only one truthmaker, it will be possible for there to be many truthmakers. And so the problem of negative facts remains open.

The Shrinking Block

Why are there no defenders of the shrinking block theory of time - the view that the present and future exist but not the past? Here's one advantage of the theory: it gives a good explanation for a version of the 'thank goodness that's over' intuition. If I tell you that there is going to be an hour of pain in your lifetime and you can choose whether it's to be in your past or your future which would you choose? I bet, other things' being equal, you'd choose it to be in your past. But why? If Shrinking Block is true there's a good reason for so choosing: existent pains are a lot worse than non-existent ones.

Does Growing Block have advantages over Shrinking Block? Why be a growing block theorist? My old friend from grad school, Joseph Diekemper (currently Gifford fellow at St Andrews, and soon to be lecturer at Queen's Belfast) cites the fixity of the past and the openness of the future as reason to accept Growing Block. But his main target is the presentist: Joseph thinks the presentist can't account for the asymmetry in fixity because they have no corresponding asymmetry between the past and future. Well, this alone won't move the Shrinking Block theorist, because they do have such an asymmetry - it's just the other way around from the Growing Block.

Indeed, in some ways the Shrinking Block view seems more able to account for the fixity of the past and the openness of the future. The intuition to be saved, I take it, is that we can affect how the future will be but not how the past was. Well ask yourself this: what would it be easier for us to affect - an existent state of affairs or a non-existent one? Surely an existent one, since we can't even have causal interaction with a non-existent state of affairs.

I'm not seriously trying to get you to believe the Shrinking Block theory, of course. But I'd be interested to know just why Growing Block is meant to be a better option.

Naturalness in Idaho

I'm off very soon to the INPC metametaphysics conference in Boise. Many other fun people will be there (not least fellow CMM-er Andy McGonigal, fresh from a spell at Cornell).

Together with Iris Einheuser, I'm going to be responding to Ted Sider's paper "Which disputes are substantive?". It's been great to have a serious think about the way that Ted thinks of this stuff, and how it relates to the Kit Fine inspired setting that I've been working on lately.

Anyway, the whole writing-a-response thing got way out of hand, and I've ended up with a 7,500 word first draft. I do think there's a couple of substantive issues raised therein for the kind of framework (otherwise really really attractive) that he's been pushing here and in recent work. The worry centres around quantification into the scope of Ted's "naturalness" operator. For any who are interested, I've put the draft response up online.

After the INPC, I'll be in San Fran for the Pacific APA, along with many other CMM and Leeds folks.

CMM attracts more metaphysicians

We are delighted to announce that Sonia Roca Royes has been awarded an externally funded postdoc to spend two years at the CMM, starting in June 2007. Sonia's research so far has been on essentialism, and she has published in Mind and Erkenntnis. We're very pleased that she'll be joining us.

This is the same period of time that Stephan Leuenberger, currently a postdoc at the ANU and winner of the 2006 Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholars Competition, will be joining us, replaing me as the CMM research fellow in metaphysics.

It's also around this time that Professor John Divers will be making his triumphant return to Leeds. And Helen Steward will have just joined us from Oxford.

The future of metaphysics at Leeds looks very bright indeed!

Fundamentality again

I've added two substantial sections at the end of my paper on real and derivative existents; the latest version, for anyone who cares, is here.

Robbie and I are going to be giving a joint presentation on this stuff at a metaphysics workshop in St Andrews on may 17th. Elizabeth will also be giving a paper. - Watch this space for details!

Dear John, thank you for your paper . . .

Elizabeth and I were talking to Kris McDaniel last night about the similarity between rejection letters from journals and ‘Dear John’ letters from significant others who are soon to be ex-significant others. So: we offer the following translation manual for interpreting journals.

In place of ‘Thank you for submitting your paper X to our journal. Competition is intense, and . . .’ read ‘We need to talk . . . ’

In place of ‘We wish you every success in finding an alternative avenue of publication’ read ‘I’m sure there’s someone really special out there for you.’

In place of ‘Competition is intense, and although I read your paper with interest . . .’ read ‘I’m young – I need to consider all my options’

In place of ‘The referees thought the paper deviated from the aims of the journal’ read ‘It’s not you, it’s me’

In place of ‘Based on the advice we’ve received, we cannot accept your paper’ read ‘My friends don’t like you, so it’s over’

In place of 'The Editor would be prepared to consider a revised version ... ' read 'Perhaps we could hook up sometimes when I'm in town --- on a "no commitment" basis ... '

In place of ‘Please consider our journal in the future’ read ‘I hope we can still be friends!’

And in place of ‘I’m sorry to tell you that, upon consideration of the referees’ comments, your paper will not be accepted for publication’. Read: ‘I just don’t think this is gonna work’

Vagueness and contradiction in derivative reality

While we disagree on some of the details, both Robbie and I agree one can admit that there are complex objects without, in some sense, being ontologically committed to complex objects: there need be no complex objects in fundamental ontology.

What complex objects exist derivatively then? Well, if they’re not really extra elements of our ontology we might think we should just go ahead and say that the claims of universalism come out true: that for any collection of objects, there is (derivatively) a sum of those objects. That, I think, is Armstrong’s view: complex objects are an ontological free lunch, so we might as well be universalists.

But we’re certainly not forced into saying that. Just as we are concerned with reconciling a nihilistic ontology with the truth of everyday judgements concerning the existence of tables and persons, etc, we might also be concerned with not going too far – that is, preserving the everyday judgements concerning the non­-existence of the sum of Hitler’s left ear, an atom in the sun, and the number 2. So we might tell a story whereby our fundamental, atomistic, ontology accounts for the truth of some theory of restricted composition.

Indeed, it seems that we can avoid one of the main objections to restricted composition: namely, the Sider-Lewis objection from vagueness. If composition is restricted, they say, it must be either brute or vague. If it’s brute, that’s metaphysically arbitrary in an objectionable way. But if it’s vague then this must be ontic vagueness, since there’s no vagueness in the language of quantificational theory, and that’s no good because ontic vagueness is A Bad Thing.

There’s plenty to say about that argument as applied against run-of-the-mill restricted composition theorists, of course, (Is brutality really all that bad?[1] Is ontic vagueness?[2]), but even if you think the argument is good there, it seems to have no weight at all against the kind of restricted composition you would get on the Robbie/Ross route.

Suppose we go organicist. A complex object only (derivatively) exists if the simples that account for its existence jointly and exhaustively participate in some life. There will be cases where it is vague whether we have a complex object. Is this objectionable? It seems not – even on the assumption that there cannot be ontic vagueness. Because what there really is is (we may suppose) perfectly precise. It’s just vague whether some collections of the fundamental existents account for the existence of a complex object. In my terminology, it will be vague whether they make true any existence claims concerning complex objects. Ontic vagueness only looks worrying, if it ever does, if it infects fundamental ontology: the derivative can be as indeterminate as you like. (C.f. Elizabeth’s ‘Ontic vagueness without supervenience’.)

(Maybe this gives us an argument for priority monism: the view (defended by Jonathan Schaffer) that the one big whole is what's fundamental, and the parts derivative on it. Quantum mechanics tells us (my esteemed colleagues tell me!) that the very smallest things are indeterminate. Maybe that gives us reason to deny that they're fundamental and instead accept that the quantum particles are derivative on the fundamental whole.)

If that’s right, it seems to apply to other cases as well. I’m thinking in particular of dialetheism. Many people find objectionable the idea that both a proposition and its negation can be true. I share the suspicion if the proposition concerns how fundamental ontology is; but it doesn’t seem objectionable to me if fundamental reality is consistent, but the consistent way fundamental reality is results in an inconsistent derivative reality.

Think of the particular cases of true contradictions dialetheists are fond of. The Liar sentence – L – springs to mind. L is both true and false! But who cares? Sentences are not, we might think, part of fundamental ontology. What’s fundamental is, on my view, just the truthmakers. So what would be objectionable is if, say, the truthmaker for L both existed and didn’t exist, for then fundamental reality would be inconsistent. But the dialetheist is not committed to anything like this. We could easily tell a story whereby fundamental reality (for me, the truthmakers) is consistent and makes true both L and its negation. And this just doesn’t seem objectionable to me. Why should I care about some sentence being both true and false? Why should I care, even, if some thing both does and doesn’t exist – provided the sense in which it exists is mere derivative existence? All that seems bad to me is if there is inconsistency at the fundamental level; if our best theory tells us that this consistent fundamental reality accounts for true inconsistencies, so be it.

---

[1] See Ned Markosian’s ‘Brutal Composition’, Daniel Nolan’s ‘Vagueness, Multiplicity and Parts’ and my ‘The Contingency of Composition’.

[2] Go to Elizabeth’s homepage!

More on fundamentality

Robbie says below that people thinks about the fundamental/derivative distinction in such different ways. One truthmaker for this claim is the pair of him and me! At least, maybe: we've been talking about this stuff, and I'm not entirely sure about whether we do in fact disagree substantially. Anyway, I thought I'd also post my current thoughts on the matter. This is *extremely* work-in-progressy, and a lot of work needs to be done, so comments are very welcome.

My paper is here.

Fundamental and derivative truths (x-post)

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, I've decided to post a first draft of "Fundamental and derivative truths" on my work in progress page.

I've been thinking about this material a lot lately, but I've found it surprisingly different to formulate and explain. I can see how everything fits together: just not sure how best to go about explaining it to people. Different people react to it in such different ways!

The paper does a bunch of things:

• offering an interpretation of Kit Fine's distinction between things that are really true, and things that are merely true. (So, e.g. tables might exist, but not really exist).
  
• using Agustin Rayo's recent proposal for formulating a theory of requirements/ontological commitments in explication.
  
• putting forward a general strategy for formulating nihilist-friendly theories of requirements (set theoretic nihilism and mereological nihilisms being the illustrative cases used in the paper).
  
• using this to give an account of "postulating" things into existence (e.g. sets, weirdo fusions).
  
• sketching a general answer to the question: in virtue of what do our sentences have the ontological commitments they do (i.e. what makes a theory of requirements *the correct one* for this or that language?)

This is exploratory stuff: there's lots more to be said about each of these, and plenty more issues (e.g. how does this relate to fictionalist proposals?) But I'm at a stage where feedback and discussion are perhaps the most important things, so making it public seems a natural strategy...

I'm going to be talking in more detail about the case of mereological nihilism at the CMM structure in metaphysics workshop.

(X-posted from theories n' things)

objectionable content?

I just noticed that at the top of the Blog page there's a link where you can alert Blogger to objectionable content.

I can just see it: "Dear Blogger. Cameron thinks that *every* truth has a truthmaker. What a nutcase! Can't you do something about him?"

:-)

I hoped to have something interesting to say about Jonathan Schaffer's 'The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker' which I'm responding to at the Pacific APA. But I'm driving myself crazy thinking about different dependence relations, and I'm still too traumatized to speak about it. Hopefully next week . . .

structure etc

The final line-up for the Structure workshop on March 10th are:

Katherine Hawley (St Andrews): 'Magic and Mereology'
E.J. Lowe (Durham): 'Structure and Categories'
Kris McDaniel (Syracuse): 'Ways of Being'
Robbie Williams (Leeds): 'Semantics for Nihilists'

(Julian Dodd unfortunately had to pull out.)

The timetable is up at

http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phlrpc/StructureWorkshop.htm

College values

There was an article in the Guardian yesterday written by a professor who had taught a theatre class at an American university. As part of the assessment of the course students were required to view a particular play and write on it. At one point in the play two men kiss. One of the students informed the professor that he wouldn’t be watching the play, and when asked why not he replied (“with a smile” – the smile is crucial!) that he couldn’t, because he was a Christian.

In the article the professor was speaking out against the view – apparently gaining in popularity – that the student should have the right to opt out of that assessment. His reason was that universities are bastions of liberal thought and values, and that we should simply come clean and admit that it is these values that we are teaching to our students. And if you don’t like it? Tough, no one forces you to be here!

I agree with his conclusion – that the student shouldn’t have been able to opt out of this assignment while still remaining in that class – but for completely different reasons.

I don’t think universities should be in the business of trying to impart liberal values on our students; or any values for that matter – we should be trying to educate our students to enable them to come to an informed decision about their beliefs and values. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t set as an assessment a play involving a homosexual incident, for the simple reason that to set such an assessment isn’t to teach, or even endorse, the values that the play might expound.

If a professor sets Mein Kampf as a course text, that doesn’t mean she is forcing Nazi values on her students, nor does it mean she is endorsing them. What she is doing is teaching students what those values are, which will hopefully lead them to make an educated choice regarding those values.

Provided the professor is marking an assessment based on the quality of the arguments and not the particular conclusions that are defended, I don’t see how there can be any problem over setting as an assignment a piece of work that preaches values that might be different from a student’s. If the Christian student believes that homosexuality is wrong, and if he thought that made an impact on the aesthetic quality of the play, then he can say that in his assignment. If he makes his case well, then it shouldn’t matter to the professor what his conclusion is; and if he doesn’t make it well then he should perhaps think harder about why he believes what he believes.

So no – this student shouldn’t have been able to opt out of this assessment. But it’s nothing to do with liberal or conservative ideologies; the point is simply that what you think of an assigned piece of work shouldn’t have a bearing on whether you participate in the assignment – it should only affect the content of your assignment.

Composition and war

In a recent interview, the historian Niall Ferguson is asked what his thesis is re the 2nd world war, and he says

"That there was no such thing. There were multiple conflicts that we choose to lump together."

I'm not sure what the point is here: a denial of unrestricted composition over events? I mean, everyone agrees that the 2nd world war was composed of many distinct conflicts, don't they? Surely we can just lump them together and name that 'the second world war'. What's the content of this thesis then?

Other news regarding composition: I've just found out that my paper 'The Contingency of Composition' will be coming out in a special issue of Philosophical Studies devoted to papers from the 2006 BSPC at WWU. This makes me happy - this was the first paper I wrote whose content didn't overlap at all with that of my thesis, so getting it published makes me feel all grown up!

structure etc

An update on CMMs upcoming workshop: Structure in Metaphysics.

http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phlrpc/StructureWorkshop.htm

Leeds' own Robbie Williams has agreed to join Julian Dodd, Katherine Hawley and Kris McDaniel as a speaker. He will be talking on 'Semantics for Nihilists' and Hawley will be talking on 'Magic and Mereology'. Watch this space for details of Dodd and McDaniel's talks.

Registration will be on the day, although please let us know in advance if you would like to join us for dinner in the evening. There will be a £15 registration fee (only £5 for students), which will include lunch and tea/coffee.

apropos of nothing:

Many truthmaker theorists think that necessary truths don't need truthmakers, or that they are trivially made true by every thing. Many truthmaker theorists also think that if p entails q, q is made true by what makes p true. I don't agree with either claim, but certainly one shouldn't hold both, given that 'actually, p' is necessary and entails p.

Perspectives and magnets

As Brian Weatherson notes, the new Philosophical Perspectives is now out. This includes a paper of mine called "Illusions of gunk". The paper defends mereological nihlism (the view that no complex objects exist) against a certain type of worry: (1) that mereological nihlism is necessary, if true; and (2) that "gunk-worlds" (worlds apparently containing no non-complex objects) are possible. (See this paper of Ted Sider's for the worry) I advise the merelogical nihilist to reject (2). There are various possibilities that the nihilist can admit, that plausibly explain the illusion that gunk is possible.

The volume looks to be full of interesting papers, but there's one in particular I've read before, so I'll write a little about that right now.

The paper is Brian Weatherson's "Asymmetric Magnets Problem". The puzzle he sets out is based on a well-entrenched link between intrinsicality and duplication: a property is intrinsic iff necessarily, it is shared among duplicate objects. Weatherson examines an application of this principle to a case where some of the features of the objects we consider are vectorial.

In particular, consider an asymmetric magnet M: one which has a pointy-bit at one end, and is such that the north pole of the magnet "points out" of the pointy end. Intuitively, the following is a duplicate of another magnet M*: one with the same shape, but simply rotated by 180 degrees so that both the north pole and the pointy end are both orientated in the opposite direction to M. (Weatherson has some nice pictures, if you want to be clear about the situation).

Though M and M* seem to be duplicates, their vectorial features differ: M has its north pole pointing in one direction, M* has its north pole pointing in the opposite direction. Moral: given the link, we can't take vectorial properties "as a whole" (i.e. building in their directions) as intrinsic, for they differ between duplicates.

What if we think that only the magnitude of a vectorial feature is intrinsic? Then we get a different problem: for their are pointy magnets whose north pole is directed out of the non-pointy end. Call one of these M**. But in shape properties, and so on, it matches M and M*. And ex hypothesi, in all intrinsic respects, their vectorial features are the same. So M, M* and M** all count as duplicates. But that's intuitively wrong (it's claimed).

Such is the asymmetric magnets problem. The challenge is to say something precise about how to think about the duplication of things with vectorial features, that'd preserve both intuitions and the duplication-intrinsicality link.

Weatherson's response is to take a certain relationship between parts of the pointy magnet its vectorial feature, as intrinsic to the magnet. In effect, he takes the relative orientation of the north-pole vector, and a line connecting certain points within the magnet, as intrinsic.

Ok, that's Weatherson's line in super-quick summary, as I read him. Here are some thoughts.

First thing to note: the asymmetric magnets problem looks like a special case of a more general issue. Suppose point particles a, b, c each have two fundamental vectoral features F and G, with the same magnitude in each case. Suppose in a's case they point in different directions, whereas in b and c's cases they point in the same direction (in b's case they both point north, in c's case they both point south). The intuitive verdict is that a and b are not duplicates, but b and c are. But, if you just demand that duplicates preserve the magnitudes of the quantities, you'll get a, b, and c as duplicates of one another; and if you demand that duplicates preserve direction of vectoral quantities, you'll get none of them as duplicates. That sounds just like the asymmetric magnets problem all over again. Let me call it the vector-pair problem.

What's the natural Weathersonian thought about the vector-pair problem? The natural line is to take the relative orientation ("angle") between the instances of F and G as a perfectly natural relation. (I think that Weatherson might go for this line now: see his comment here).

It seemed to me that a natural response to the problem just posed might be this: require that the magnitude of any quantities is invariant under duplication; also that the *relative orientation* of vectoral properties be invariant under duplication. Thus we build into the definition of duplication the requirement that any angles between vectors are preserved. There's thus no easy answer to the question of whether vectorial features of objects are intrinsic: we can only say that their magnitudes and relative orientations are, but their absolute orientation is not.

This leads to a couple of natural questions:

(A) Why do we demand absolute sameness of magnitude, and only relative sameness of direction, when defining what it takes for something to be a duplicate of something else?

I'm tempted to think that there's no deep answer to this question. In particular, consider a possible world with an "objective centre", and where various natural laws are formulated in terms of whether objects have properties "pointing towards" the centre or away from it. E.g. suppose two objects both with instantaneous velocity towards the centre will repel each other with a force proportional to the inverse of their separation; while two objects both with instantaneous velocity away from the centre will attract each other with a similar force (or something like that: I'm sure we can cook something up that’ll make the case work). Anyway, since the behaviour of objects depends on the "direction in which they're pointing", I no longer have strong intuitions that particles like b and c should count as duplicates (with that world considered counteractually).

I find it harder to imagine worlds where only relative magnitudes matter to physical laws, but I suspect that with ingenuity one could describe such a case: and maybe (considering such a scenario counteractually again) we'd be happier to demand only relative sameness of magnitudes, in addition to relative sameness of orientation of vectoral properties, among duplicates.

(B) The above proposal demands invariance of relative orientation of vectoral properties among duplicate entities. But that doesn't straightaway deal with the original asymmetric magnet case. For there we had the orientation of the shape-properties of the object to consider, not just the orientation of the vectoral quantities that the (parts of) the object has.

I'm tempted by the following way of subsuming the original problem under the more general treatment just given: say that some perfectly natural spatial properties are actually vectoral in character. E.g. the spatial property that holds between my hand and my foot is not simply "being separated by 1m" but rather "being separated by 1m downwards" (with, of course, the converse relation holding in the other direction). After all, if in giving the spatial properties that I currently have, we just list the spatial separations of my parts, we leave something out: my orientation. And that is a spatial property that I have (and is coded into the usual representations of location, e.g. Cartesian or polar coordinates. Of course, such representations are all relative to a choice of axes, just as the representation of spatial separation is relative to a choice of unit.)

Now, there might be ways of getting this result without saying that spatial-temporal relations among particulars are fundamentally vectorial. But I'm not seeing exactly how this would work.

(Incidentally, if we do allow fundamentally vectorial spatio-temporal relations, then it's not clear that we need to appeal to spatio-temporal relations among parts of an object to solve the asymmetric magnets problem: appealing to the angle between the "north pole" and the (vectorial) spatio-temporal properties of the pointy magnet may be enough to get the intuitive duplication verdicts. If so, then the Weathersonian solution can be extended to the case where the magnets are extended simples, which is (a) a case he claims not to be able to handle (b) a case he claims to be impossible. But I disagree with (b), so from my perspective (a) looks like a serious worry!)

(x-posted on theories n things)

CMM workshop

This is just a heads-up to the world that there will be a CMM workshop at Leeds on March 10th. The topic is 'Structure in Metaphysics', and Julian Dodd (Manchester), Katherine Hawley (St Andrews), Kris McDaniel (Syracuse) and Leeds' own Robbie Williams are signed up to speak.

Detials of paper titles/registration details etc will follow sooner or later - but for now: keep your diaries free.

The kinds of topic the workshop will deal with are (i) mereology, (ii) grades of being/existence, (iii) ontological dependence, (iv) facts, states of affairs, propositions, etc.

A preliminary webpage is up at

http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phlrpc/StructureWorkshop.htm

Identity of Indiscernibles and Haecceities

According to the identity of indiscernibles, as a matter of necessity, no two things can share all their properties. If a and b share all their properties then they are not two things, but one: they are numerically identical. You can’t have qualitative identity without thereby having numerical identity.

Why think the identity of indiscernibles is true? Well, suppose it’s false; in that case there is a possible world containing two entities, a and b, which share all their properties. And the uncomfortable thought is meant to be that in that world there is nothing that makes these entities distinct.

This thought proceeds from the idea that, for every object o, something grounds the identity of o: there is a metaphysical explanation for o’s being that very object, and not some other thing. What could do this grounding other than some subset of o’s properties? But if o is the thing it is in virtue of having some subset of its properties, then any thing which had all and only o’s properties would have its identity determined in the same way as o, and hence would be numerically identical to o.

That, I take it, is the intuitive thought behind the identity of indiscernibles. Any defender of that thought has to say something about Max Black’s world consisting solely of the two homogenous iron spheres Castor and Pollux. One thing to say is that the objects have different haecceitistic properties. Castor is distinct from Pollux because one has the property being identical to Castor and the other the property being identical to Pollux. Something seems unsatisfying about that. John Heil describes it somewhere as “the sort of move that gives philosophy a bad name.” But what’s wrong with it?

Firstly, you might not like the admission of such a ‘property’ into your ontology. Our grasp of what properties are seems to be tied to qualitative ways for things to be – such as being red or being round etc; the introduction of mere haecceitistic properties might be thought to have stretched the concept of property beyond breaking point.

But suppose you accept the existence of properties of the form being identical to x; there is a deeper problem. We are told that Castor and Pollux are distinct because Castor has the property being identical to Castor and Pollux has the property being identical to Pollux. But that only serves to ground the distinctness of Castor and Pollux if these properties are themselves distinct. If ‘the property being identical to Castor’ and ‘the property being identical to Pollux’ are two names for the same property then the fact that Castor has the former property and Pollux the latter doesn’t serve to ground their distinctness. So we need to ensure that these haecceitistic properties are distinct if their admission into our ontology is going to help us with Black’s example. But then, by the same reasoning that led us to the identity of indiscernibles in the first place, there must be something that grounds the distinctness of these properties. Now what do we usually think are the individuation conditions for properties? One might try: P and Q are the same property iff they make the same contribution to the qualitative nature of their bearer. But of course, this will only do for qualitative properties; applying it to mere haecceitistic properties would make them all identical, since mere haecceitistic properties don’t make any contribution to the qualitative nature of their bearers (that’s precisely why it rankles to call them ‘properties’). So for mere haecceitistic properties it seems we should have instead: P and Q are the same haecceitistic property iff they belong to the same thing.

But if that’s right then being identical to Castor is distinct from being identical to Pollux in virtue of the bearer of the former being distinct from the bearer of the latter. In which case we can hardly appeal to the distinctness of the properties to ground the distinctness of the bearers.

One who invokes mere haecceitistic properties to deal with Black’s world wants to hold that [Castor is distinct from Pollux] in virtue of the distinctness of being identical to Castor and being identical to Pollux; but it seems that they should be committed to [being identical to Castor is distinct from being identical to Pollux] holding true in virtue of the distinctness of Castor and Pollux. But these ‘in virtue of’ claims can’t both be true, since in-virtue-of is asymmetric. So the introduction of mere haecceitistic properties doesn’t seem to help: to ground the distinctness of Castor and Pollux the distinctness of the properties would apparently need to be taken as brute; and if we’re prepared to do that, why not just accept the distinctness of Castor and Pollux as brute in the first place?