Abstract
Realism about material objects faces a variety of epistemological objections. Recently, however, some realists have offered new accounts in response to these long-standing objections; many of which seem plausible. In this paper, I raise a new objection against realism vis-à-vis how we could empirically come to know mind-independent essential properties for objects. Traditionally, realists hold kind-membership and persistence as bound together for purposes of tracing out an object’s essential existence conditions. But I propose kind-membership and persistence for objects can conceptually come apart and function epistemologically distinctly from one another—in which case the usual reliance by realists on an assumption of persistence to determine kind-membership conditions is unjustified. Thus, present realist attempts to explain how empirical detection of mind-independent essential properties for objects could possibly occur inevitably results in circularity. The charge against the realist is to explain why we don’t have to first discover persistence conditions for an object before we can ascertain kind-membership conditions for an object. If no answer is forthcoming, then it seems the weight of the epistemological objection to realism is back in full force.
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Notes
It is a deeply held association for most realists, but, to be clear, it is not universally agreed that an object can’t depart from its kind without ceasing to exist—it would depend on which kinds we’re talking about. And some will point out that, likewise, persistence conditions are not invariably necessary properties: provided object O in fact belongs to K, O cannot go on existing without continuing to belong to K, but, for all that, O could have belonged to a kind other than K. (On this point, see Penelope Mackie 2006 and 2008) So be it. I am not taking a stand on either side of this particular point; but rather that for most realists about material objects such an association of the kind I am attacking is central and standard practice.
Elder, for example, does precisely this (and it is the clearest exposition of the move). The general idea is found in several places throughout Elder’s work. The theme is discussed in chapter 2 of Elder 2004 and in “Carving up a Reality in which There Are No Joints,” in Steven D. Hales, ed., A Companion to Relativism. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010a); but it is laid out most clearly in Familiar Objects and their Shadows (Cambridge University Press: 2010b.) The project is discussed tangentially in Elder 2007 and 2006.
Rea calls such properties “intrinsic” as opposed to “extrinsic.” So, biological kinds which many (including Elder) view as having external relational properties which define their kind membership would have extrinsic essential kind-membership properties (because a biological individual’s essential properties derive from their origin, which is derived from some other biological individual); whereas water having the property of “being essentially H2O” would be intrinsic.
And this is precisely what Rea argues for: that only non-naturalist versions of RMO can escape the DP. See Chapters 8 and 9 of Rea 2002 for some proposals on how such versions could work.
And, henceforth, my use of the term “realist” can be taken as shorthand for “realist committed to naturalism.”
As Sidelle writes, “I shall argue that our methods can be understood to give us modal knowledge only if the ‘modal structure of the world’ is closely tied to our conventions; our methods cannot give us knowledge of a completely independent reality, but only of the limits of our conceptual scheme.
Thus, we must reckon the necessary truths of which we actually have knowledge as dependent on our conventions for their necessity,” (Sidelle 1989, 87). See also Alan Sidelle 1998, 423–48. Amie Thomasson is a conventionalist who provides a strong attack against the realist that does not rely on the epistemic challenge. See Thomasson 2007.
Note: I am trying to avoid the assumption that objects not having mind-independent essential properties necessarily entails that those objects do not mind-independently exist. Some contest this entailment, and so I am focusing merely on the objects having mind-independent essential properties.
Thanks to Alexis Elder (no relation to Crawford Elder) for pointing out just how many resources are available to the realist for RMO justification.
In Rea’s case he thinks that these pragmatic arguments entail further metaphysical commitments that go beyond the methods available to naturalism.
And for Rea there is the further mistake of trying to focus his DP on pragmatic defenses for the naturalist in particular. It does not seem that the DP establishes the epistemic pressure against naturalism’s employment of pragmatic arguments (as opposed to non-naturalist employment of them) that Rea wants it to, but I will not argue this here.
There is, of course, corresponding differences at the micro-biological level of the chicks, but there are no obvious surface level detectable corresponding differences—or, at least, there appears not to be any.
The skill possessed by these chicken sexers is of great interest to cognitive scientists for this very reason. See Richard Horsey, “The art of chicken sexing.” (http://cogprints.org/3255/, accessed March 1st, 2009.) Much more here deserves to be said. We could look at stories of how highly successful poker players “just know” or “have a feeling” as to how certain cards are going to play out in a given hand, as another example. Assuming we do not believe that they nor the chicken sexers have some kind of “magic” ability, we assume, rightly, that they have some empirical access to the knowledge in question—but that we simply do not yet understand how their access works.
To clarify, presumably by “determine” we mean something like “learn” or “detect” these properties, in which case we are taking a realist stance. The conventionalist might agree with the claim that we somehow “determine” the object’s properties, but mean by it to “fix,” “stipulate,” or “structure,” them. But clearly in the chicken sexer case the determination of gender is a discovery, and so, the realist aims to use this kind of defense in a similar manner. I’ll show below precisely why the defense does not work; it is due in large part because the “determination” in the essential property case cannot be so easily assumed to be an empirical discovery as the chicken sexer case can be.
Again, Rea holds to RMO but thinks it is not compatible with naturalism and thus focuses his attack against any naturalist realist. Sidelle thinks RMO is unjustifiable period.
In this case it is the sex organs of the chickens that develop so as to be easily visible at later stages.
Many thanks to Jesse Mulder for the suggestion of this possible response from a realist on this point.
The realist might protest and here claim that we can learn that certain properties essential to Bob go away once Bob’s particles are dispersed and that this fact (that those properties have gone away) is empirically verifiable—that is, those properties existence is a fact in the world. Certainly, I agree. But the fact that those properties’ are essential to Bob is not a physical fact anywhere to be found in the mind-independent world.
Again, if one says it is simply analytic that the claim is true, they solve the epistemic challenge, but they are no longer realists about material objects, but instead have opted for some version of conventionalism. Notice in this move there is also no truth-maker for the claim—there is literally nothing (in the mind-independent world) that makes it true. Or, if one takes an even harder-line approach it is we who make it true—our mind in carving up reality—in which case clearly the objects’ essential properties are not mind-independent.
Note: I colloquially use the “truth-maker” locution not as an endorsement of truth-maker alethic theories but as a helpful moniker to point to a lack of any empirically detectable fact that makes claim X true. Below we’ll see Elder’s attempt to give us an empirical story for the realist, but I’ll argue that it fails for internal reasons regarding the relationship between persistence conditions and kind-membership conditions.
And to my knowledge he is the only contemporary philosopher to make such an attempt.
The story I outline below is cobbled together from a variety of Elder’s works, most specifically from Familiar Objects and Their Shadows (2010b).
As Elder writes: “More sophisticated cognitive activities enable us to detect patterns that are more long-term: we observe enough about an object to identify it as a member of kind K, add to it knowledge about how members of K move (or do not move), sometimes together with partial knowledge as to how members of K alter qualitatively over time, and arrive at the knowledge that this member of K is the very member we earlier observed.” (Elder, Familiar Objects and Their Shadows, 2010b.)
And, as I’ll note below, if persistence is not prior to kind-membership then it is at least simultaneous with kind-membership. In either case, kind-membership cannot be used to establish persistence, for kind-membership conditions first (or simultaneously) require persistence conditions.
Rea points out this aspect of persistence early on and is right that, as he writes, “it is a conceptual truth that material objects have persistence conditions...” (Rea 2002 , 83.) That is, to even consider an object, you must assume some basic persistence conditions in order to be able to pick out an object. (Later it appears Rea might be inconsistent on this point when he speaks freely about an object in question “prior” to our picking out its persistence conditions.)
This will be elaborated below, but one of the primary reasons for this is that many (if not most) of the kind-membership conditions we detect are dispositional in nature, and, thus, require observation over time.
Rea clearly affirms this (see note 25 above) and Elder affirms something like the necessity of persistence in a variety of places cited in this paper. Below I’ll look at what the outcome for my argument would be on a view that rejects the necessary connection between even an object’s existence and its kind-membership conditions in considering Stephen Schwartz’s recent position as elucidated in, “The Essence of Essence,” (2009) Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
Nota bene: The observer is not asking what the term rabbit means but asking to which object it is being applied. There is a semantic argument occasionally given for thinking that realists are mistaken when they claim that we empirically learn what the persistence conditions for Fs are. It goes like this: “We cannot be talking or thinking about Fs at all, unless we first have an accurate understanding of what the properties of Fs are—and, particularly, what the persistence conditions for Fs are.” This relies on a deeply internalist view of semantics. Realists will instead endorse an externalist picture. My argument in this paper in no way relies on this semantic claim. Rather, I am arguing over how we can discover essential properties of objects and setting aside how the semantics would occur. (Many thanks to Crawford Elder and Donald Joy for help on this point.)
Note that I am not suggesting that persistence and numerical sameness across time are necessarily the same concept. Persistence is usually understood as certain facts about what an object can and cannot survive, whereas numerical sameness across time is simply our ability or inability to track the same object from one moment to the next. I am arguing that once we place an object in kind K we then have more thoroughly elaborated persistence conditions for object X. But there exists an object X to place into kind K prior to its placement therein. This object must have some persistence—at least insofar as we can even conceive of it as there in front of us. This “simple persistence” may just be the same thing, then, as numerical sameness across time for this object (logically) prior to our placing it in a kind K. Elder distinguishes “numerical sameness across time” and “sameness in kind” for an object in Familiar Objects and Their Shadows. But, to use his locution, I argue that he misses as a matter of logical priority that (it seems) sameness in kind for an object cannot be accessed until numerical sameness across time for an object is first accessed; or at least we should ask the question of if it could be. Perhaps it can, but there seems to be no good reason to assume so.
For certainly, if we start to enumerate properties and property changes, over the short-term and long-term (as Elder claims we do), we already assume that there is an object existing over which these other properties can take hold. As Rea puts nicely: “If there are no facts at all about what sorts of changes a putative thing X can and cannot survive, then there is no such thing as X.” (Rea 2002, 82.) (Note: All uses of “first” and other temporally loaded terms are, of course, to be understood as purely logical or epistemic priority ordering; not actual temporal event sequences.)
This is my paraphrase of the kinds of explanation a realist might give. Elder writes something very similar in Familiar Objects and Their Shadows, 2010b. Emphasis mine.
Rea, personal correspondence, March 1st, 2009. Emphasis Rea’s.
In an earlier work (that was elaborated upon and developed in World Without Design) we find some of the roots of Rea’s position here, “Kind concepts are the tools by which we forge the link between essential properties and ways of arranging matter. It is traditionally assumed that there is both a metaphysical and an epistemological connection between kind-membership and persistence conditions… persistence conditions are grounded in essential properties, there are also such connections between kind-membership and essential properties.” (Rea 2000, 115.).
In correspondence with Rea on this point, he agrees that my argument will hold in either case. In the symposium to Rea’s World Without Design in Philo, Andrew Melnyk argues that there’s a general mistake made by Rea in connecting persistence to essential properties, but it does not concern the epistemic priority relationship as my challenge lays out here. See Melnyk 2005 and Rea 2005 for discussion.
Thanks to an anonymous Philosophia reviewer for this potential response.
Notice, again, Sidelle and the conventionalists would here say that we can carve an object out of sense data—and that this is precisely what we do. Such carving, wherein we impose essential properties onto objects in the natural world, is not an option, of course, for the realist.
See S. Schwartz 2009.
Again, RMO not committed to naturalism has some potential explanations for how this could be done because the mechanism need not be empirical. See note 4 above.
References
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Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to Crawford Elder for extensive help and advice on this paper. Thanks are also due to Michael Rea for helpful conversations and permission to quote our personal correspondence. Finally, I am grateful to Jesse Mulder, Donald Joy, Micah Newman, Alexis Elder, Levente Szentkirályi, and Abbilynn Strawser for helpful conversations, editorial advice, and reviews of this paper.
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Strawser, B.J. Rea’s Revenge and the Persistent Problem of Persistence for Realism. Philosophia 39, 375–391 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9284-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9284-3