Abstract
This paper aims to make headway on two related issues—one methodological, the other substantive. The former concerns cost–benefit analyses when applied to metaphysical theory choice. The latter concerns material coincidence, i.e., multiple objects occupying the same space at the same time, such as the statue and the clay from which it’s made. The issues are entwined as many reject coincidence on the grounds that it’s costly. I argue this judgment is unjustified. More generally, I set out and defend a framework for the use of cost–benefit analyses in metaphysics. The framework employs a fourfold division of pretheoretical costs and benefits (inconsistency or consistency with common sense), and theoretical costs and benefits (loss or gain of theoretical virtues such as simplicity). Yet these do not hold equal weight. Instead I argue that the appeal to theoretical benefits is illegitimate if the theory in question cannot first account for the relevant evidence or data, including, crucially, certain bits of pretheoretical or common knowledge. This is crucial because I not only argue that material coincidence is consistent with common sense, against what is widely believed, but that coincidence may even be a feature or implication of the common sense view. Put together, the result is that accepting an anti-coincidence theory for its putative theoretical virtues at the expense of common sense is an improper usage of the cost–benefit methodology. I instead conclude that material coincidence should be accepted with equanimity—which, after all, is free.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The analogy is no doubt encouraged by Lewis’ (1986) many rhetorical flourishes, including his claim that “the price is right” for modal realism (p. 135) provided that the benefits cannot “be had more cheaply elsewhere” (p. 5).
For example, CBAs in economics and finance require costs and benefits to be expressed as quantities of a currency (dollars or Euros or yen, say), whereas costs and benefits in philosophy are not expressed via currency, or any quantities at all. Second, economic CBAs require all options to be expressed in a common (or convertible) currency in order for the options to be commensurable. But without a philosophical currency a fortiori there is no common currency that would allow for a direct (or quantitative) comparison regarding what exactly opting for one philosophical theory over another would cost (or gain). Third, an economic CBA is or approximates a decision procedure; there is a (nearly) step-by-step process for assigning monetary values to the various options and then reading off the optimal choice as that which maximizes monetary gains over losses (see sources cited in footnote 1). As far as I can tell, however, there is nothing resembling a decision-procedure for philosophical CBAs (partly, no doubt, because the lack of quantities or currencies makes it potentially unclear when one option is better than another). Granted, it is of course possible that these dis-analogies have no bearing on the effectiveness or legitimacy of a philosophical CBA, but that hardly can be taken for granted. Yet as indicated above, I am not aware of any serious or rigorous defense of the philosophical CBA in light of the many differences—and there are others besides those just listed—between monetary and philosophical CBAs.
Sider (2009) provides a particularly good example; as a paper intended for undergraduates (as part of Blackwell’s ‘Contemporary Debates’ series), the question of what motivates anti-coincidence theories is especially vivid. In particular, Sider uses the (supposed) absurdity of coincidence to motivate and justify adopting four-dimensionalism and the theory of temporal parts. (Cf. Lewis 1986; Heller 1990; Sider 2001; and McGrath 2007, who also motivate four-dimensionalism on the basis of coincidence-avoidance.) Adopting a revisionary conception of objects to avoid coincidence is not unique to four-dimensionalism, however. Others attribute to kinds (such as statue) hitherto unknown powers, including the ability to “dominate” other kinds (such as clay)—thereby suppressing the subordinate kinds’ persistence conditions (Burke 1994; Rea 2000). Others take away familiar powers, such as an object’s ability to survive the loss of its parts (Chisholm 1973). And some deny that (many) composite objects exist altogether (van Inwagen 1990; Merricks 2001).
For a recent example relevant to coincidence, Rose (2015) argues that folk intuitions regarding the persistence of objects over time are especially misguided.
Granted, if there are widely shared beliefs that result from some advanced theory but are neither pretheoretical nor purely a product of that theory, there might be room to talk of ‘extra-theoretic’ costs or benefits with respect to those beliefs (rather than there only being theoretical costs and benefits with respect to theoretical virtues). But as far as I can tell this further distinction does not affect my main argument, and will be put aside.
One might think the explosion incurs a theoretical cost insofar as having more objects is un-parsimonious. Parsimony is not typically understood in terms of token-cardinality, however (i.e. the number of things). Instead parsimony is thought to be lost when adding different kinds of things, or different kinds of explanatory principles, for example. Insofar as the exploding objects would just be more of the same kind of thing—viz., composite material object—the explosion is not un-parsimonious in the sense typically at issue.
That the explosion and anthropic problems differ in their cost–benefit profiles is another reason to distinguish the two aspects of what Wasserman treats as a single problem.
See Berto and Jago (2018) for an overview of nonclassical logics in relation to impossible worlds (as well as impossible worlds more generally). I do not mean to suggest, however, that this way of handling the phenomenon of “hyperintensionality” is mandatory, nor that impossible worlds must be understood as some radically different kind of thing (thanks to an anonymous referee for this journal for pressing me on this). That being said, what matters for my purposes is only that some sort of “heavy duty” theoretical machinery likely must be employed to handle the hyperintensional distinctions that, if absent, would make the world (and the theory that aims to model it) simpler.
Moreover, and as an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis points out, it is arguable that not violating extensionality (for propositions, at least) incurs a pretheoretical cost: insofar as common sense distinguishes necessary truths such as ‘2 + 2 = 4’ and ‘John is John’, a simple or purely extensional system unable to account for their hyperintensional distinction might be pretheoretically costly. As defending this further claim is not necessary for my argument here, however, I’ll put it aside.
Thanks to another anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for raising this objection.
This approach is partly motivated by research suggesting that experimental attempts to discern folk intuitions on matters of philosophical import may not be free from experimenter effects. For example, Korman and Carmichael (2017) criticize the “suggestive wording” of Rose and Schaffer’s (2017) attempts to elicit folk intuitions on mereological composition, amongst other possible effects (such as those found by Cullen 2010).
One may think cases of partial overlap (such as a knee and a leg) do not involve material coincidence (unlike total overlap), in which case the knee/leg example has no force here (thanks to an anonymous referee for this objection). But this misconstrues the point of the example, which concerns only folk principles (and not coincidence per se). In particular, the idea here is simply that familiar cases of partial overlap show that the folk do not hold some unqualified or unrestricted principle regarding numerically distinct objects in the same place (regardless of what counts as full-fledged coincidence).
Here I differ slightly from Hirsch (2002, p. 116), who claims the ‘no-two-things-in-a-place’ principle is a hasty generalization, understandably made but false due to overlap cases. As I construe it, however, the folk principle is true but restricted, not false but unrestricted (cf. previous footnote).
Thanks to Dan Korman for this objection.
Despite using this analogy to illustrate the possibility of an erroneous appearance of a conflict, I do not mean to imply these two cases are entirely analogous: for instance, in the ‘bachelor’ case it is stipulated that the key words are being used in different senses, whereas in the coincidence case ‘coincidence’ is (presumably) used uniformly. Yet the differences between the cases shouldn’t be overplayed either. For it is independently plausible that the folk count differently than metaphysicians do (cf. Lewis 1976). In particular, note that expressions of identity and difference—e.g. ‘is (not) the same thing as’, ‘is distinct from’, ‘are two not one’—are applied quite differently inside and outside the so-called “ontology room”. Whereas the metaphysician’s use of these (and cognate) expressions tends to be governed by a strict nonidentity of discernibles principle (where any difference between x and y is sufficient for numeric distinction), the folk tend to count things as distinct only if they do not overlap. (This explains, among other things, why one can enter the ‘12 items or fewer’ line at the supermarket with trillions of subatomic particles in one’s basket.) It is therefore plausible that the folk’s pretheoretical interpretation of utterances such as ‘Statue and Clay are distinct’ is something like ‘Statue and Clay exist (or could exist) in separate or non-overlapping regions of space’. And yes this does sound weird! But of course this is not actually what those who uphold coincidence think, and this is not what they mean to say. So were this misunderstanding the reason for coincidence sounding weird, yet again the sense of weirdness need not be accounted for lest one incur a cost. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this journal for discussion on this point.
Another reply might help here. According to Anscombe (1971, p. 151), someone once said to Wittgenstein that people think the sun goes around the earth because it looks that way. To which Wittgenstein replied, in effect, ‘and how would it look if the earth went around the sun?’ Adapted here, the idea is that Statue and Clay being distinct wouldn’t seem any different than their being identical. Thus, pointing out that they seem identical, pretheoretically, is not sufficient for establishing that denying their identity would incur a pretheoretical cost, as the same seeming could just as well support their being pretheoretically non-identical. Instead, as argued above, there would need to be a reason, beyond the mere seeming, for taking coincidence to incur a pretheoretical cost.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for this suggestion.
Nonetheless, a worry about the methodology underlying my claim here might remain. For one might think that in order to say there is no pretheoretical cost one is (or I am) relying on theoretical knowledge, which raises the further worry that when opponents of coincidence try to explain away conflicts with intuition, friends of coincidence cannot wave those off without considering their theoretical responses. But there is a difference between ‘theorizing’ in the sense of reflecting or (abstractly) characterizing, on the one hand, and employing theoretical knowledge in order to revise a datum on the other. Consider: to show that coincidence is not really incompatible with the impenetrability of matter I did not rely on special theoretical terms or vocabulary (of the sort that might need definition via a Ramsey sentence), nor did I rely on the (putative) truth of some theoretical doctrine or tenet, such as relying on geocentrism in order to overturn an apparently heliocentric-supporting observation. Rather, I simply attempted to suss out what the common sense view is- for example, by pointing out that common sense does not deny that overlapping objects, such as a knee and leg, can exist in the same place at the same time. That said, how to achieve theory-neutral rather than theory-laden descriptions of the coincidence-relevant pretheoretical evidence is an important matter that I don’t wish to underplay. Accordingly, I will discuss this matter in greater depth in the next section. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this journal for pressing the objection.
I have also removed Korman’s original emphasis of the phrase ‘on the basis of Ockham’s razor’.
Though perhaps easy to overlook, this point shouldn’t be surprising. Discussion of the role of theoretical virtues in theory choice emerged in the philosophy of science due to the possibility (if not actuality) of empirical underdetermination (see e.g. Tulodziecki 2013; Lycan 1998; Kukla 1994). The idea, roughly speaking, is that if multiple theories each account for evidence, then the evidence underdetermines which theory should be adopted. So how should one choose? This is where the appeal to theoretical virtues is made: amongst those empirically equivalent theories that account for the evidence, the simplest or most elegant theory, say, is said to be preferable. This line of thought does not warrant choosing a theory for its virtues irrespective of what it can account for, however.
This claim is sometimes attributed to Einstein, though the attribution appears apocryphal. I thank an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for pressing this objection.
Of course, if one thinks one cannot know anything because one might be a brain in a vat then one likely rejects this argument. Bracketing radical skepticism, however, I assume one can speak of ‘knowing’ in everyday contexts, in the usual sense of the term, without worry of such defeaters.
Note that this is not tantamount to a wholesale endorsement of “common sense”, nor does this imply that a theory must account for any pretheoretical belief simply because it is pretheoretical. For the appeal to ordinary means of acquiring knowledge allows one to distinguish amongst claims said to be common-sensical. In particular, whereas some common sense beliefs may well be folklore or superstitions, say, other ordinary claims can be said to be matters of common knowledge (in the ordinary sense of ‘know’). For example, while it may belong to common sense that what goes around comes around, say, this claim is obviously not on the same epistemic footing as the aforementioned claims that America is in the western hemisphere, or that statues are works of art. Consequently, I am not arguing that a theory must account for any and all common sense beliefs on pain of failing to account for the data, but, rather, it is only for those bits of common sense that are fairly described as knowable through ordinary means that a theory’s failure to account for them is plausibly similar to a theory’s failure to account for the footprints in Korman’s case. I thank an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for encouraging me to make this point more clearly.
I thank an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for pushing versions of these objections.
The expression ‘Abelardian’ in this context is due to Noonan (1991), though Lewis himself uses the word ‘inconstant’. Regardless, the idea is that predicates such as ‘can survive being squashed’ are said to have different meanings—or express different properties—when attached to ‘Statue’ or ‘Clay’. See Bennett (2009, p. 61) on this particular point, and Barker and Jago (2014) for a recent critical discussion of this strategy more generally.
Sider (2009) also motivates anti-coincidence by calling coincidence absurd; cf. footnote 4.
References
Adler, M., & Posner, E. (Eds.). (2001). Cost-benefit analysis: Legal, economic, and philosophical perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1971). An introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. London: Hutchinson Press.
Baker, L. R. (2002). The ontological status of persons. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65(2), 370–388.
Barker, S., & Jago, M. (2014). Monism and material constitution. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 95(2), 189–204.
Bennett, K. (2004). Spatio-temporal coincidence and the grounding problem. Philosophical Studies, 118, 339–371.
Bennett, K. (2009). Composition, collocation, and metaontology. In M. Chalmers & R. Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics: New essays on the foundations of ontology (pp. 38–76). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Berto, F., & Jago, M. (2018). Impossible worlds. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2018 edn.). The older 2013 version is available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/impossible-worlds/.
Boardman, A., Greenberg, D., Vining, A., & Weimer, D. (2010). Cost-benefit analysis (Vol. 4). London: Pearson Press.
Burke, M. (1994). Preserving the principle of one object to a place. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54, 591–624.
Chisholm, R. (1973). Parts as essential to their wholes. Review of Metaphysics, 26, 581–603.
Cullen, S. (2010). Survey-driven romanticism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1, 275–296.
Fine, K. (2003). The non-identity of a material thing and its matter. Mind, 112, 195–234.
Fine, K. (2006). Arguing for non-identity: A response to King and Frances. Mind, 115, 1059–1082.
Gilbert, M. (1989). On social reality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Heller, M. (1990). The ontology of physical objects: Four-dimensional hunks of matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hempel, C. G. (1953). Reflections on Nelson Goodman’s: The structure of appearance. Philosophical Review, 62, 108–116.
Hirsch, E. (2002). Against revisionary ontology. Philosophical Topics, 30, 103–127.
Korman, D. (2009). Eliminativism and the challenge from folk belief. Nous, 43(2), 242–264.
Korman, D. (2010). Strange kinds, familiar kinds, and the charge of arbitrariness. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 2010, 119–144.
Korman, D., & Carmichael, C. (2017). What do the folk think about composition and does it matter? In D. Rose (Ed.), Experimental metaphysics (pp. 187–206). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Kukla, A. (1994). Non-empirical theoretical virtues and the argument from underdetermination. Erkenntnis, 41(2), 157–170.
Lewis, D. (1976). Survival and identity. In A. Rorty (Ed.), The identity of persons (pp. 17–40). Berkeley: Berkeley Press.
Lewis, D. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Lycan, W. G. (1998). Theoretical (epistemic) virtues. In T. Crane (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy. Taylor and Francis. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/theoretical-epistemic-virtues/v-1.
Markosian, N. (2008). Restricted composition. In T. Sider, J. Hawthorne, & D. W. Zimmerman (Eds.), Contemporary debates in metaphysics (pp. 321–340). Oxford: Blackwell Press.
McDaniel, K. (2010). Parts and wholes. Philosophy Compass, 5(5), 412–425.
McGrath, M. (2007). Four dimensionalism and the puzzles of coincidence. In D. Zimmerman (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 3, pp. 143–176). Oxford: Oxford Press.
Merricks, T. (2001). Objects and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mishan, E. J., & Quah, E. (2007). Cost-benefit analysis (5th ed.). London: Routledge Press.
Noonan, H. (1991). Indeterminate identity, contingent identity, and Abelardian predicates. Philosophical Quarterly, 41(163), 183–193.
Rea, M. (2000). Constitution and kind membership. Philosophical Studies, 97, 169–193.
Rescher, N. (1955). Axioms for the part relation. Philosophical Studies, 6, 8–11.
Ritchie, K. (2015). The metaphysics of social groups. Philosophy Compass, 10(5), 310–321.
Rose, D. (2015). Persistence through function preservation. Synthese, 192(1), 97–146.
Rose, D., & Schaffer, J. (2017). Folk mereology is teleological. In D. Rose (Ed.), Experimental metaphysics (pp. 135–186). London: Bloomsbury.
Rosen, G., & Dorr, C. (2002). Composition as a fiction. In R. Gale (Ed.), The Blackwell guide to metaphysics (pp. 151–174). Oxford: Blackwell Press.
Sider, T. (2001). Four-dimensionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sider, T. (2009). Temporal parts. In T. Sider, J. Hawthorne, & D. W. Zimmerman (Eds.), Contemporary debates in metaphysics (pp. 321–340). Oxford: Blackwell Press.
Simons, P. M. (1987). Parts: A study in ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sosa, E. (1999). Existential relativity. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23(1), 132–143.
Spelke, E. S. (1988). The origins of physical knowledge. In L. Weiskrantz (Ed.), Thought without language: A Fyssen foundation symposium (pp. 168–184).
Spelke, E. S. (1990). Principles of object perception. Cognitive Science, 14, 29–56.
Thomasson, A. (2010). Ordinary objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomasson, A. (2015). Ontology made easy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tulodziecki, D. (2013). Underdetermination, methodological practices, and realism. Synthese, 190(17), 3731–3750.
Van Inwagen, P. (1990). Material beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Varzi, A. (2019). Mereology. In: E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2019 Edn). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/mereology/.
Wasserman, R. (2018). Material constitution. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2018 edn.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/material-constitution/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Goldwater, J. The Lump and the Ledger: Material Coincidence at Little-to-No Cost. Erkenn 86, 789–812 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00132-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00132-3