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is such an entity as the aggregate of microparticles that com-
poses Max at the moment of his death. The main reason
for thinking so is the doctrine of unrestricted mereological
composition, a.k.a. universalism. But from the standpoint of
my starting assumption that ontology should operate
under empirical load, giving preference to just those objects
that our folk or learned theories about the world find it
useful to posit that doctrine appears suspect. The burden
of proof is on its proponents [see the introduction] and not,
as is sometimes supposed,2 on its opponents. That aside,
there are arguments against it. In chapter 7 I argue that
mereological sums of microparticles and the argument
generalizes would, if real, have essential properties that do
not test as essential on any realist test. In chapter 4 I argue
Real Essential Natures, or Merely Real Kinds? 65
that true laws of nature do not apply to randomly assem-
bled aggregates of microparticles. Thus if any true causing
must be subsumed under some law of nature, such aggre-
gates cause nothing, which for many will impugn their
reality. These objections seem to me to overwhelm the only
real argument in favor of universalism that I know of, namely
Sider s [1997, pp. 216 222]. That argument relies on the
assumption that there must in any finite world be a precise
whole number of concrete objects [p. 221]. But what is it
for an object to be concrete ? If Sider had some positive
answer, he could argue that there cannot, in the nature of
the case, be borderline instances of such objects cases, for
example, in which it is indeterminate whether concrete
object b is a distinct object from concrete object a. But Sider s
only characterization [p. 221] is privative and open-ended:
to be concrete is to be not a set and not a property and not
a universal and not. . . .)
But now let the champion of alteration only return to
the starting point of this section, and read the collection of
microparticles composing Max differently. Collections of
microparticles do not have to be construed as aggregates,
after all. We can instead think of a collection of micro-
particles as comprising different members at different
times. We can suppose that, as individual microparticles get
stripped from Max s epidermis by the abrasion of the wind,
and as new microparticles get added to Max by his breath-
ing in of oxygen, the collection of microparticles which
composes Max loses some members and adds others it
alters in membership, but continues to exist. In short we
may individuate collections of microparticles in the same
way some philosophers for example, Alan Sidelle
individuate lumps of matter (Sidelle 1998, pp. 426 430).
A given lump can survive departure or destruction of some
66 Chapter 3
component bits, but not of all, and just how many departures
it can survive (or how many additions sustain) will be a
matter fixed by context or by stipulation.
So conceived, the collection of microparticles that com-
poses Max at the time of the lightning strike can claim a
career that reaches fairly far back in time: it is the same
collection as composed Max when he wrote the check. Thus
here we do have a subject of alteration that has a whole
course of existence, a course altered and reshaped (or de-
shaped) by the lightning strike. But can alteration in this col-
lection of microparticles satisfy the other requirement (3.1)
on an alteration that supplants, in serious ontology, the
apparent destruction of a familiar object can we specify
what the alteration involves, and what undergoes it,
without quantifying over Max himself?
The collection of microparticles that composes Max, my
opponent will say, occupies exactly the same space as Max
does, at all moments in its career up until Max s death. But
in virtue of what does it do this: what about that collection
makes it false to say that, at some of these moments, it is
located elsewhere? My opponent cannot answer that it is
after all just that collection of microparticles (just that lump
of matter) which, during Max s existence, composes Max.
For Max himself does not strictly exist, on my opponent s
official view, whereas this collection of microparticles does.
So my opponent must rather say that the path apparently
taken by Max, at various points in his apparent existence,
merely marks out for common sense the regions occupied
by this collection, and is not constitutive of this occupancy.
But then what is constitutive of this collection s occupying,
at any given moment, the full volume that it does? My oppo-
nent must identify a relation (or system of relations) that
binds together all the individual microparticles within the
collection, and captures no microparticles outside it and
Real Essential Natures, or Merely Real Kinds? 67
the relation must be a real microphysical relation that the
microparticles bear to all and only one another, not an imag-
inary relation that they bear to the imaginary Max. Yet there
is no such microphysical relation (or system of relations), as
we noted in the previous section.
I should add a word on a certain variant of the kind of
collection of microparticles that has an extended career
and is shifting in its membership. The membership condi-
tions for such a collection, we have noted, are looser than
those for membership in an aggregate. To some philoso-
phers the looseness of the conditions will suggest vagueness
in composition, and vagueness in composition will seem to
be trouble (though see chapter 6). Hence some philosophers
will prefer to think of what alters, when it appears to
common sense that Max is destroyed, as a four-dimensional
object. Its temporal parts are precisely defined aggregates,
each found where some appropriate precisification of Max
(were he but real) exists (cf. Sider 1997, pp. 223 ff.). Against
this four-dimensional object I lodge the same objection
mutatis mutandis as against the three-dimensional enduring [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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