Abstract
Composition as Identity (CAI) is, roughly, the thesis that the parts of a whole, taken collectively, are in some sense identical with the whole. Einar Duenger Bohn argues for Universalism from CAI. Universalism says that composition is totally unrestricted: wherever two or more objects occur, an instance of composition occurs, however unnatural or gerrymandered. Bohn’s argument relies on inferences with generic quantifiers, but he does not provide a clear account of generic quantification. My argument is that on the most plausible approach to thinking about such inferences, the argument fails.
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Notes
Megan Wallace gives variants of this style of argument (Wallace 2011a). It seems likely that discussions of this kind belong on the Index with what Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett dub “pseudo-scientific metaphysics” (cf. Ladyman et al. 2007: 17–27). If Ross, Ladyman and Spurrett are right, then one of the few reasonable ways of proceeding with any such discussion of questions about composition (or constitution) is by means of a kind of critical via negativa, explaining why this or that putative constructive metaphysical claim does not hold. I put this advice into practice with the current paper.
Some philosophers defend weak versions of CAI, where the claim is not that composition is literally identity, or concomitant with one-many identity, but rather composition is merely analogous to ordinary one–one identity. Donald Baxter is one of the primary early proponents of strong CAI (cf. Baxter 1988a, b, 1999). Weak CAI was pioneered by David Lewis, as well as by David Armstrong, and has, more recently, been developed by Theodore Sider. Cf. Lewis (1991), Armstrong (1978), and Sider (2007). Others propose stronger formulations of CAI but employ the material biconditional which, as Bohn observes (2014: 145), affirms only that composition is concomitant with one-many identity (some modalize this, arguing that they are necessarily concomitant).
By the standard definition in classical extensional mereology: x is a proper part of y iff x is a part of y and x is not identical with y.
The notation is Bohn’s.
In referring to these as “Leibniz’s Law” arguments, I merely conform to a façon de parler. No historical claim is intended.
One style of argument, in particular, which has gained notoriety in the literature is due to Yi and Sider. It is another Leibniz’s Law argument, but it is unusual in that it does not purport to derive an outright contradiction from CAI. The reasoning revolves around some potentially anomalous behavior by the plural logical predicate among (or “is one of”). The objection goes that this problematic behavior by among stems from CAI, and, since plural logic provides an indispensable background for CAI (without plural logic, it is difficult even to imagine how to articulate many forms of CAI), this is a serious problem for CAI theorists. Bohn’s strategy for defending CAI against Leibniz’s Law arguments is developed specifically in response to the Yi-Sider argument. Cf. Yi (1999: 151 ff), Sider (2007: 57–58), Sider (2014: 221), and Bohn (2014: 146–147).
I do not offer this as an objection specifically to Bohn’s argument, but anyone who wants to take seriously the notion of our “dividing reality into objects” by means of conceptualizing reality in different ways should be put on notice: Tyler Burge has provided vigorous argumentation against such a hyper-intellectualized conception of objectual reference and individuation. He has shown that such views about individuation and reference are quite simply unrealistic, ignoring well-established facts from the psychology of perception (cf. Burge 2010, esp. relevant here are pp. 238–250 and 483–492).
The disparity is explained thus: an expression that refers to something cannot refer to something else unless it is used in a different context or in a different sense, whereas an expression that is true of something can be true of something else as well. Cf. Yi 2006: 248.
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Falls, E. Composition as Identity, Universalism, and Generic Quantifiers. Erkenn 86, 1277–1291 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00153-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00153-y