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Biological-mereological coincidence

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Abstract

This paper presents and defends an account of the coincidence of biological organisms with mereological sums of their material components. That is, an organism and the sum of its material components are distinct material objects existing in the same place at the same time. Instead of relying on historical or modal differences to show how such coincident entities are distinct, this paper argues that there is a class of physiological properties of biological organisms that their coincident mereological sums do not have. The account answers some of the most pressing objections to coincidence, for example the so-called “grounding problem”, that material coincidence seems to require that coinciding objects have modal differences that do not supervene on any other properties.

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Notes

  1. The example is from van Inwagen (1981). Other widely discussed examples that are essentially similar include Peter Geach’s case of Tibbles and Tib (see Wiggins 1968), and Chrysippus’ puzzle about Dion and Theon (see Burke 1994).

  2. This problem has been widely discussed, but the name "grounding problem" appears to have been coined by Bennett (2004).

  3. See Simons (1987, p. 41).

  4. There may be plausible restrictions, for example a formal mereological restriction that prohibits the summing of overlapping individuals.

  5. This highlights an important difference between my case and Gibbard’s case of Lumpl and Goliath. Lumpl is a lump of clay, not a mass or a sum. It is the sort of thing that can come into being when two smaller lumps are stuck together, and can persist through small changes in parts. This is why Lumpl can have the same career as Goliath. In the cases I am considering, one of the entities is a mereological sum, so it cannot have the same career as an organism, because it doesn’t survive any change in parts.

  6. Zimmerman (1995) finds the appeal to ungrounded persistence conditions "absurd" (p. 87). Bennett (2004) provides an interesting exploration of the unfortunate consequences of accepting primitive "sortalish" properties in defense of coincidence. To be clear: the "primitivism" at issue here is the view that there is really nothing in virtue of which an object has its modal profile–it is just a brute fact. This is distinct from the "modal primitivism" according to which modal concepts cannot be completely analyzed in nonmodal terms–as Lewis (1986) attempted to do by postulating real but non-actual possible worlds. One could be a modal primitivist in this second sense and still maintain (plausibly I think) that essential properties and persistence conditions are not brute, but supervene on the nonmodal.

  7. One type of nonmodal occurrent property sometimes appealed to in distinguishing purportedly coincident objects is a certain kind of relational property. Fine (2003) for example, claims that the statue but not the alloy of which it is made may be "defective, substandard, well or badly made, valuable, ugly, Romanesque, exchanged, insured, or admired" (p. 206). I won’t address this suggestion in detail here, but I do wish to raise a worry about the appeal to these sorts of properties. These have to do with the way the statue but not the alloy is perceived or related to by a community that recognizes the statue as a work of art. While there is nothing objectionable about distinct objects differing only in their relational properties (as in qualitative duplicates differing only in their spatial relations to other objects), in order for an art community to deem the statue but not the alloy valuable, e.g., it seems that it must antecedently be able to distinguish them. In the absence of differences between the statue and the alloy other than the ways we relate to them, the anti-coincidentalist can plausibly claim that this is another case of our thinking of the same thing in two different ways.

  8. "Swampman" was originally introduced by Davidson (1987), though in a very different context, to illustrate a claim about mental content. While Davidson’s "swampman" is produced in the same way as my "swamp creature", he is not instantaneous. My instantaneous "swamp creature" is meant to represent an instantaneous replica of a biological organism.

  9. Doepke (1982) also employs a strategy of defending coincidence by attempting to identify nonmodal, occurrent properties possessed by a constituted entity (a person in the case he considers) but not by the collection of parts that constitutes it. His example is having a true memory, which he thinks requires that the person who has the memory persists through a period that includes the time at which the memory is acquired. I find this example unpersuasive. It is an adequate explanation of an entity’s having a true memory at a time t that it be causally related in the right way to an entity that received the right sort of sensory input. The collection of parts that is supposed to constitute the person at t can be a relatum in this sort of causal relation.

  10. Olson (2001) also emphasizes this supervenience principle as one the coincidentalist cannot accommodate.

  11. At least in the sense van Inwagen intends, Composition Supervenience must be rejected by the coincidentalist. For van Inwagen, "parts" are material parts. A coincidentalist could accept Composition Supervenience by developing an account of parts of objects that are not material parts, and which would not be shared by coincident entities. See for example Paul’s (2006) account of qualitative parts, and Koslicki’s (2008) account of structural parts.

  12. See for example Metaphysics viii 6.

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Acknowledgments

For helpful comments and feedback on this paper I am indebted to Berit Brogaard, Dan Korman, Skip Larkin, Bill Lycan, Laurie Paul, John Roberts, and Irem Steen.

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Crane, J.K. Biological-mereological coincidence. Philos Stud 161, 309–325 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9740-3

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