Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Material Constitution is Ad Hoc

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Erkenntnis Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The idea that two objects can coincide—by sharing all their proper parts, or matter—yet be non-identical, results in the “Problem of Coincident Objects”: in what relation do objects stand if they are not identical but share all their proper parts? One solution is to introduce material constitution. In this paper, I argue that this is ad hoc since, first, this solution cannot be generalized to solve similar (real) problems, and, second, there are pseudo cases of coincidence that should not trigger the introduction of material constitution and these cannot be distinguished in any principled way from the allegedly real cases of coincidence.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Other uses of the term ad hoc include: in the sense of the first kind, Nolan (2001, 150), Dodd (1999, 155), Rodríguez-Pereyra (2002, 218); the second kind: Loux (1998, 50), Maurin (2002, 108), and the third kind: Loux (1998, 35), Rodríguez-Pereyra (2002, 210–211).

  2. A similar principle is suggested by Rodríguez-Pereyra (2002, 216–217).

  3. Strictly speaking, only such things as solutions, objections, or replies can be ad hoc—not objects, relations or other non-propositional entities. I use locutions as “constitution is ad hoc” in an elliptical manner for “postulating constitution is an ad hoc solution”; and “ad hoc entity” for “the postulation of the existence of this entity is ad hoc”. Thanks to Tobias Hansson Wahlberg and an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify this.

  4. Compare Jubien (1993) and Lewis (1985).

  5. Defences include: Baker (1997), Lowe (2009), Simons (1987), Wiggins (1968, 2001).

  6. One might object that constitution does not even solve the problem, but only labels coincidence as a case of constitution without explaining how two objects can share many properties while having different persistence conditions (Olson 1996, 375). I will not pursue this line of reasoning; I simply assume that constitution is a solution to PCO.

  7. An alternative motivation for constitution might be that we have the intuition that in some cases there are two objects (a statue and its matter), and that constitution is introduced by stipulation to account for this intuition. But even if a notion is introduced because it “fleshes out” a certain intuition, it could still be that there are other (less ad hoc) ways to account for the intuition, or that this intuition should be abandoned because it leads to paradoxes or other problems (see also Sects. 4.3, 6). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  8. Complaining that it is not allegedly, but definitely, the case that we have two objects in PCO is question-begging against the constitution-denier who holds that PCO merely reflects how we use terms such as “Goliath” and “Lump”.

  9. In the remainder of the paper I treat Lump as a mereological sum, but nothing hinges on this.

  10. Denying that PC is a genuine metaphysical problem (Hofweber 2009; Rychter 2009) is of little help to the constitutionalist, since the question then becomes why PCO is a genuine problem if the very similar PC is not.

  11. Claiming that Candle’s matter constitutes Candle does not solve PC, since this leaves unexplained how it can be that Candle has incompatible properties.

  12. They even have different Wikipedia entries!

  13. That I use fictional entities is irrelevant. I could have taken George Elliot and Mary Ann Evans: the former had a contract with a publisher, the latter did not; the latter could exist without the former existing. In a Fregean spirit I could have chosen Hesperus and Phosphorus; one is visible in the morning, the other is not.

  14. That we seem to speak as if a statue is something different from its constituting matter, while we do not speak of a bent candle as being different from a candle is a reflection of this intuitive difference.

  15. Intuition, or common sense, does seem to drive some constitutionalists when they allow for coincidence, e.g. Baker (1997, 620) and Lowe (2009, 40).

  16. Compare Markosian (1998) on when brute answers may be justified.

  17. Note how ad hoc-ness “spreads when pressed upon”. This is not that surprising: if a solution is ad hoc then no good defence can be given for it; hence some defences against the charge of being ad hoc will be ad hoc defences.

  18. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this objection. The view might be associated with Wiggins (2001).

  19. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer whose comments led to a much-improved version of this reply.

  20. I am not aware of anyone defending this view though.

  21. This characterization is inspired by those given by Doepke (1997, 19) and Simons (1987, 239).

  22. Mereological essentialism as defended by Chisholm (1976) might be vulnerable to the same complaint of ad hoc-ness, since Chisholm does mention constitution (1976, 99–100). However, it is unclear—to me—what status Chisholm gives to constitution: is it a real relation, or is it simply a way of speaking to explain why we think of entia succesiva (fictional, non-existing entities) such as ships and statues as being related to real objects (mereological sums)? Only in the former case does my argument operate against Chisholm.

  23. Special relativity may also provide a reason to believe that objects have both spatial and temporal parts (Balashov 1999).

  24. I have assumed throughout this section that perdurantism does solve both PC and PCO. This seems warranted, since the perdurantism–endurantism debate focuses on theoretical virtues such as simplicity, intuitiveness, and ontological parsimony, and many philosophers of both sides seem to take for granted that the theories solve the relevant problems. A good example of this fact is that one complaint against perdurantism is its revisionary character (Simons 1987, 177). Again, perdurantism is only one of many alternatives to constitution theories, so even if it fails, the constitutionalist should still abandon constitution in favour of some other theory. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this.

  25. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this objection to me.

References

  • Baker, L. R. (1997). Why constitution is not identity. The Journal of Philosophy, 94(12), 599–621.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Balashov, Y. (1999). Relativistic objects. Noûs, 33(4), 644–662.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Betti, A. (2015). Against facts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Burke, M. B. (1994). Preserving the principle of one object to a place: A novel account of the relations among objects, sorts, sortals and persistence conditions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54, 591–624.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casati, R., & Varzi, A. C. (2004). Counting the holes. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82(1), 23–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chisholm, R. M. (1976). Person and object: A metaphysical study. London: Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly, C. (2005). So where’s the explanation. In H. Beebee & J. Dodd (Eds.), Truthmakers: The contemporary debate (pp. 83–103). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dodd, J. (1999). Farewell to states of affairs. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 77(2), 146–160. doi:10.1080/00048409912348901.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doepke, F. C. (1997). Spatially coinciding objects. In M. C. Rea (Ed.), Material constitution—A reader (pp. 10–24). New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fine, K. (2003). The non-identity of a thing and its matter. Mind, 112, 195–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geach, P. (1962). Reference and generality. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbard, A. (1975). Contingent identity. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 4, 187–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansson, T. (2007). The problem(s) of change revisited. Dialectica, 61(2), 265–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawley, K. (2001). How things persist. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heller, M. (1990). The ontology of physical objects: Four-dimensional hunks of matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hinchliff, M. (1996). The puzzle of change. Philosophical Perspectives, 30, 119–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofweber, T. (2009). The meta-problem of change. Noûs, 43(2), 286–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2001). A materialist metaphysics of the human person. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irvine, A. D. (2015). Principia mathematica. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/principia-mathematica/.

  • Jubien, M. (1993). Ontology, modality and the fallacy of reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • King, J. C. (2006). Semantics for monists. Mind, 115(460), 1023–1058.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1985). Counterparts of persons and their bodies. The Journal of Philosophy, 68, 203–211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loux, M. J. (1998). Metaphysics: A contemporary introduction. Routledge. http://books.google.com/books?id=vgxkGIgPlooC&pgis=1.

  • Lowe, E. J. (2005). Vagueness and endurance. Analysis, 65(286), 104–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lowe, E. J. (2009). More kinds of being—A further study of individuation, identity, and the logic of sortal terms (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markosian, N. (1998). Brutal composition. Philosophical Studies, 98, 211–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maurin, A.-S. (2002). If tropes. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, K. (2008). Endurantism, diachronic vagueness and the problem of the many. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 89, 242–253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nolan, D. (2001). What’s wrong with infinite regresses? Metaphilosophy, 32(5), 523–538.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Noonan, H. (1980). Objects and identity. The Hague: Nijhoff.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, E. T. (1996). Composition and coincidence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 77, 374–403.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paul, L. A. (2002). Logical parts. Noûs, 36, 578–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quine, W. V. O. (1950). Identity, ostension and hypostasis. In From a logical point of view (pp. 67–79). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. New York/London: MIT Press/Wiley. http://books.google.com/books?id=sVH3YlIZK5QC&pgis=1.

  • Raven, M. J. (2011). There is a problem of change. Philosophical Studies, 155, 23–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodríguez-Pereyra, G. (2002). Resemblance nominalism: A solution to the problem of universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=iGjTq2Tr4usC&pgis=1.

  • Rychter, P. (2009). There is no puzzle about change. Dialectica, 63(1), 7–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sider, T. (2001). Four-dimensionalism. An ontology of persistence and time. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sider, T. (2013). Against parthood. In K. Bennett & D. W. Zimmerman (Eds.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 8, pp. 237–293). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simons, P. (1987). Parts: A study in ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steen, I. (2010). Three-dimensionalist’s semantic solution to diachronic vagueness. Philosophical Studies, 150, 79–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, J. J. (1998). The statue and the clay. Noûs, 32, 148–173.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Inwagen, P. (1990). Material beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varzi, A. C. (2000). Mereological commitments. Dialectica, 54, 283–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varzi, A. C. (2005). Change, temporal parts, and the argument from vagueness. Dialectica, 59(4), 485–498.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wieland, J. W. (2008). Minimize ad hoc turtles. MA Thesis. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. http://dare.uva.nl/cgi/arno/show.cgi?fid=126277.

  • Wiggins, D. (1968). On being at the same place at the same time. The Philosophical Review, 77, 90–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiggins, D. (2001). Sameness and substance renewed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Arianna Betti, Erik J. Olsson, Frits Gåvertsson, and Tobias Hansson Wahlberg for discussion on ideas expressed in this paper and helpful comments on earlier versions. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for this journal whose comments greatly improved the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Lund University, Box 192, 221 00, Lund, Sweden

    Jeroen Smid

Authors
  1. Jeroen Smid
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeroen Smid.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Smid, J. Material Constitution is Ad Hoc. Erkenn 82, 305–325 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9818-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9818-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation