The Puzzles of Material Constitution

Monists about material constitution typically argue that when Statue is materially constituted by Clay, Statue is just Clay. Pluralists about material constitution deny that constitution is identity: Statue is not just Clay. When Clay materially constitutes Statue, Clay is not identical to Statue. I discuss three familiar puzzles involving grounding, overdetermination and conceptual issues, and develop three new puzzles stemming from the connection between mereological composition and material constitution: a mereological puzzle, an asymmetry puzzle, and a structural puzzle. Consider a statue made of a piece of clay. Call the statue ‘Statue’ and the piece of clay ‘Clay’. Clay materially constitutes Statue. What is this relation? A standard way to ask this question is to ask whether Clay is strictly identical to Statue. Or is Clay numerically distinct from Statue? The more general way to ask the question is to ask what it means for an object to materially constitute another. Is constitution simply identity? If not, what are the features of this relation? Some contemporary metaphysicians argue that material constitution is simply identity. In other words, when Statue is materially constituted by Clay, Statue just is Clay. Fine (2003) calls this view monism. Others follow the lead of what seem to be intuitive judgments about the natures, essences, and sorts of objects and defend pluralism about material constitution, denying that constitution is identity. When Clay materially constitutes Statue, Clay is not identical to Statue. After all, it seems as although Statue and Clay differ in their properties. Statue is essentially statue-shaped, but Clay is not. Clay could be shaped into a vase, but Statue would not persist through this change. Statue represents beauty and grace incarnate. Clay does not. If Statue and Clay do not share all of their properties, they cannot be identical, for if a and b are the same object, a has exactly the same properties as b. Why be a monist? Given the difference in properties, isn’t it just obvious that Statue cannot be identical to Clay? No, for monists can deny there are any real differences in essence or other properties. According to the monist, the seeming differences in essential and other properties are just differences in description. Statue is just Clay called by a different name, and considered with respect to a different context. Different contexts encourage different descriptions. We think of the object we call ‘Statue’ in such a way as to ascribe an essence that includes being statue-shaped and having representational properties of grace and beauty. But when we think of that very same object, albeit in a different way, we can call it ‘Clay’, ascribing it a different essence and different representational properties. The most popular way to be a monist is to hold that essential and other sorts of properties that seem to differ between constituting and constituted object are only skin-deep, i.e., they are context dependent rather than observer-independent features of the world. So we see how the monist can defend her position. Another sort of monist might Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x a 2010 The Author Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd endorse the objectivity of de re modal properties, but simply reject the claim that Statue and Clay actually differ with respect to such properties. The defenses available to the monist require us to reject very natural ways of thinking about ordinary objects that, at least prima facie, seem like the right ways to think about them – so, again – why be a monist? For the purposes of this article, I will focus on the most popular version of monism, which holds that the modal and other differences are only skin-deep. Why is this view attractive? Two reasons. First, monists may be independently motivated to hold that de re modal properties (and any other seeming differences between Statue and Clay) are merely skin-deep. But second, and much more importantly, monists are driven by a deep desire for parsimony. They think the pluralist contention that the world is constructed largely from materially coinciding objects fills reality with layer upon layer of excess ontological fat. (See Bennett (2004) for discussion.) The thought is that we need to take a leaner, meaner, and more sophisticated approach by re-thinking our way of considering objects related by constitution. One can make intuitive sense of monism about material constitution using an analogy. If we take the right intellectual perspective, we can see that Statue is just Clay, just as a picture is just an arrangement of pixels on paper. A dot-matrix picture has global properties—it is symmetrical, it is cluttered, and whatnot—and yet all there is to the picture is dots and non-dots at each point of the matrix. The global properties are nothing but patterns in the dots.’ (Lewis 1986, p. 14) Lewis is discussing the reductive supervenience of the picture on the arrangement of pixels; for him, reductive supervenience between particulars is just identity. Understood in terms of material constitution, the idea is that when Statue is constituted by Clay, Statue reductively supervenes on Clay, or equivalently, Statue just is Clay. One could explicate this by reasoning that Statue is nothing but the material of the clay arranged in a certain way at a certain time and Clay is nothing but the material of the clay arranged in a certain way at a certain time, so Statue must be identical to Clay. Seeming incompatibilities of properties are just the result of incompatibilities in perspective or description. The pluralist argues that all this is a mistake. The monist, in an obsessive desire to reduce, is rejecting deep facts about the natures of objects. Monists, in effect, are taking objects to be mere hunks of matter devoid of essences and certain other observer-independent characteristics. Moreover, the pluralist argues, the monists’ assumption that we can simply restate or redescribe away differences in properties of objects like Statue and Clay does not fit well with natural language semantics. (For an objection along these lines, see Fine (2003); and for a reply defending monism, see King (2006).) In any case, pluralists claim that they have the more natural, intuitive view. According to the pluralist, we should use constitution to understand why persons are different from their bodies (they are constituted by their bodies), why art objects are not just bits of material arranged in a certain way (a statue can be made of junk yet worth millions) or even to explain how mental states are different from physical states (see Paul (forthcoming, 2007), Pereboom (2002), and Shoemaker (2007)). But for pluralists to defend the idea that they have the more intuitive view, they must be able to flesh out our understanding of material constitution in a substantive way. What is it for one object to constitute another? It seems to involve the fact that the constituting object provides the material basis for the object it constitutes. Clay provides the material basis for Statue by providing the located matter that Statue is constructed from. As a result, Statue and Clay share many properties: because they share their matter and their location, they share their color and their size and many other instances of what we can call their 580 The Puzzles of Material Constitution a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd material properties. Statue and Clay also seem to share spatiotemporal parts, since they share their molecules and any smaller parts, and they may share some larger parts as well. Pluralism raises several puzzles, only some of which have been recognized and addressed in the literature. The problems cannot be avoided by endorsing four-dimensionalism about persisting objects and then arguing that the Statue is a proper fourdimensional part of Clay, or some such. We can simply stipulate that Statue and Clay exist at exactly the same spatiotemporal locations: when Clay comes into existence, so does Statue, and when it is destroyed, so is Statue. Although there seem to be good reasons to deny that Statue is identical to Clay, pluralists need to provide in-depth explanations of the nature of material objects to maintain the plausibility of their view in the face of puzzlement. The best known puzzles for pluralists are the conceptual puzzle and the grounding puzzle. The conceptual puzzle asks how we are to make conceptual sense of numerically distinct material objects sharing their matter and location. In other words, how can we make conceptual sense of multiple material objects fully occupying the same place at the same time? Wouldn’t the occupation of the space by one material object crowd out all others? For example, how can two statue-shaped material objects ‘squeeze’ into just one statue-shaped space at one time? The grounding puzzle asks how objects like Statue and Clay can differ in their modal, historical, and other properties, given that they share their matter, location, and material properties. If all of the properties of Statue supervene on its matter, location, and material properties and the properties of Clay supervene on its matter, location, and material properties, and if all of Statue and Clay share their matter, location, and material properties, then why don’t they share all of their properties? Another puzzle for pluralists is the overdetermination puzzle. The overdetermination puzzle arises when we consider the fact that Statue seems perfectly able to cause things in virtue of having certain material properties. For example, Statue’s weight causes a crack in its pedestal. But it also seems that Clay’s weight causes the crack in the pedestal. Now, it seems wrong to say that Statue’s weight contributes only part of the force that causes the crack, while Clay’s weight contributes the other part, especially when we stipulate that the crack is only as long and large as it would be if something that weighed just what Statue weighs had caused it. So Statue’s weight is perfectly sufficient, under the laws, for the crack. But so is Clay’s. Hence, Statue’s weight and Clay’s weight causally overdetermine the crack in the pedestal in a way that suggests that there is more causation than we need or want. Fleshing out what exactly pluralism about constitution involves can solve these puzzles. The conceptual puzzle can be solved once we are clear about the way in which Statue and Clay are distinct and the way in which they are not. Statue and Clay are numerically distinct, that is, they are two rather than one. There exist two objects, Statue and Clay. But Statue and Clay are not mereologically distinct, since they share some of their parts: at the very least, they share their particles, since they share their matter. So the way in which Statue and Clay are distinct is that they are two, not one, yet they share their matter and material properties, so they are not entirely separate entities. Once we understand that Statue and Clay literally share a single hunk of matter and hence literally share their token material properties, the conceptual problem dissolves. The claim is not that there are somehow two interpenetrating material objects at the same location, but rather, that there is one hunk of matter, with coincident material objects sharing this hunk of matter. Coinciding material objects, such as Statue and Clay, overlap in the same region of spacetime and are constructed from something more than the mere matter they share. The Puzzles of Material Constitution 581 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd (Perhaps, objects are constructed from their matter plus certain additional tokens of properties, such that Statue includes certain tokens of representational properties along with its matter in what it is, while Clay does not include these tokens of representational properties.) Clarity about the proper sort of distinctness exhibited by Statue and Clay also resolves the overdetermination puzzle. Because Statue and Clay share their matter, they share their causally efficacious parts and their material properties. In our example with the cracked pedestal, it is Statue’s matter having mass m that makes Statue a cause of the cracking of the pedestal. And it is also Clay’s matter having mass m that makes Clay a cause of the cracking of the pedestal. Even more precisely, it is Statue’s matter having an instance of the property of being mass m that makes Statue a cause of the cracking of the pedestal, and it is Clay’s matter having an instance of the property of being mass m that makes Statue a cause of the cracking of the pedestal. But Statue and Clay literally share their matter, and so literally share this instance of being mass m. (If one endorses tropes, then one should hold that they share their mass trope.) We can retain this solution even if we think Statue’s having an instance of being mass m and Clay’s having an instance of being mass m are numerically distinct events, since these events would literally share the property instance that is causally efficacious. So there is no problem with overdetermination. Statue and Clay share the bit of matter that is causally responsible for the crack, so they share the property instance that is causally responsible for the crack, hence they share what is causally efficacious. The grounding puzzle takes more work. Here, the puzzle is founded on the assumption that all of an object’s properties supervene upon its matter, location, and material properties. In other words, all of Statue’s properties supervene on what it shares with Clay, and all Clay’s properties supervene on what it shares with Statue, namely, its matter, location, and material properties. So how could any of their properties differ? Or as it is sometimes put: What grounds the difference between Statue and Clay? Those who wish to dismantle the grounding puzzle can attack it in at least two ways. First, they can deny the assumption that all of an object’s properties supervene on what it shares with its constituting (or constituted) object. Call the shared matter, location, and material property instances the material core. Perhaps Statue has other fundamental property instances apart from its material property instances, and some of its differences from Clay are due to these property instances. Perhaps Clay has other fundamental property instances apart from its material property instances, and some of its differences from Statue are due to these property instances. For example, some modal property instances might be ontologically fundamental property instances that do not supervene on the material core. Perhaps, property instances of being a certain sort supervene on these modal property instances plus the material core. This is one way in which Statue could have different persistence property instances and belong to a different sort or category of object from Clay. (See, e.g., Wiggins (2001).) The second way of attacking the problem, which is independent of the first way, is to deny that every object that shares a material core also has every property instances that supervenes on the core. One might hold that an object has only some of the property instances that supervene upon the core. The idea here is that when there is a material core there exist all of the instances of the properties that supervene upon it, but Statue is mereologically constructed from the material core it shares with Clay plus some but not all of the additional property instances that supervene upon their shared material core. Likewise, Clay is mereologically constructed from the material core it shares with Statue plus some but not all of the additional property instances that supervene upon the shared 582 The Puzzles of Material Constitution a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd material core. Moreover, some of the instances that construct Statue are not used to construct Clay, and (perhaps) vice versa. For development of this approach, see Paul (2006). The conceptual, grounding, and overdetermination puzzles have received a significant amount of attention. But there are other, neglected puzzles that arise for both pluralism and monism, although the details of the puzzles differ slightly for each view. These puzzles do not have well-developed solutions. One puzzle that has been recognized but needs more attention involves questions about part-whole relations and composition. For example, how is Clay related to the particles that compose it? And how is Statue related to the particles that compose it (i.e., Statue)? The composition relation is what makes a plurality of objects into a sum or whole of those objects. Presumably, the same particles are involved in composing both Statue and Clay. If one holds that composition is unique, such that the plurality of particles can only compose a single object at a time, this lends support to monism. On the other hand, the pluralist holds that even when Clay constitutes Statue, and Clay and Statue share their particles, they do not share all of their parts. For example, the part of Statue that is its head is not shared with Clay, and the part of Clay that is a head-shaped piece of clay is not shared with Statue. The matter is shared but the parts are not. Monism seems to be slurring over differences that need to be respected, and if Statue and Clay do not share all of their parts the uniqueness of composition is irrelevant. So the question arises: what is the mereology of the objects related by the constitution relation? Call this the mereology puzzle for constitution; some of its features have been discussed in the literature. Another sort of question, quite overlooked in the literature, derives from the asymmetry of the relation of material constitution: Clay constitutes Statue, and Statue does not constitute Clay. What is it about the ontology of material constitution that explains this asymmetry fact? Call this the asymmetry puzzle. The pluralist version of the asymmetry puzzle arises from the asymmetry of the constitution relation, and of asymmetries in the fundamentality of certain modal properties, asymmetries of properties of being of a particular sort, and asymmetries of certain spatiotemporal parts that are often associated with the material constitution of one object by another. The monist version of the asymmetry puzzle asks how the monist can explain the asymmetry of constitution given that strict identity is symmetrical. If constitution is just identity, then when Clay constitutes Statue it is simply identical to Statue. So Statue is identical to Clay. But Statue does not constitute Clay. The monist cannot simply revert back to differences of description without sounding ad hoc, especially since there do not seem to be any remotely natural contexts of description according to which Statue constitutes Clay. The monist could beg the question by forcing a context in which we describe Statue as identical to Clay and then say Statue constitutes Clay, but this is obviously a nonstarter. Returning to the pluralist version of the puzzle, we can make the asymmetry worries present by considering the following series of questions. Why are Clay’s essential properties such as being material or being of x molecules more fundamental than Statue’s essential properties such as being a representation of grace incarnate? Why are things that fall under the (piece of) clay-sort more fundamental than things that fall under the statue-sort? Why are the spatiotemporal parts that Clay does not share with Statue, such as the head-shaped part of Clay, more fundamental than Statue’s unshared parts, such as Statue’s head? All of these questions revolve around the asymmetry of instances of the constitution relation. We can see this once we realize that many of the questions about asymmetry are naturally answered, at least in the first instance, by positing some other difference arising from the asymmetry. For example, one might answer that Clay’s unshared parts are more fundamental than Statue’s because Clay’s unshared parts materially constitute Statue’s The Puzzles of Material Constitution 583 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd unshared parts. We might explain the difference between objects of different sorts by appealing to a difference in essences such that the essences of objects belonging to the clay-sort are more fundamental than the essences of objects belonging to the statue-sort, which in turn is explained by the fact that Clay is the sort of thing that grounds, constitutes or provides the material basis for things like Statue. On the other hand, the asymmetry of material constitution might be explained by stipulating that the essence or sort of the constituted object is simply less fundamental than the essence or sort of the constituting object. At least one of these asymmetries needs to be taken as primitive or explained in some way outside of the circle. Speaking for myself, it seems most appealing to hold that the essences or sorts of some objects are more fundamental than others and take this to ground the other asymmetries. The puzzle is especially pressing for the pluralist when we consider that, if objects are related by an asymmetrical nonreductive material constitution relation, this seems to ontologically entail that the world has an ascending hierarchy of ontological levels of some sort. The idea that there exist ontological layers, such that our world is a layered world, raises a number of questions about how to make sense of this possibility. In what sense is the world layered, and how would this fit with (currently dominant) physicalist or anti-emergentist ontologies? Such levels and the relations between them need to be explicated and understood, not least because objects at different ontological levels seem to be ordered, i.e., constituting objects seem to be more fundamental – in some rather opaque ontological sense – than the objects they constitute. (The monist will want to understand the idea of a layered world in some suitably thin sense; see the discussion of the monist’s version of the structural puzzle below.) Reflecting on the asymmetry and mereology puzzles allows us to unearth yet another overlooked puzzle of material constitution for both the monist and the pluralist. One’s mereological commitments involve metaphysical commitments (such as the view that composition is unique); how do these metaphysical commitments derived from one’s mereology fit with the substantive metaphysical commitments required to take a stance on material constitution? The composition relation is a relation that holds between parts of a whole. The constitution relation is a relation where one object provides a material basis for another (perhaps simply by being identical to it). Since both relations are basic relations of object-building, that is, mereology builds from parts to wholes and constitution builds from material bases to (at least seemingly) higher level objects, how is an object built using both composition and constitution relations? How is an individual object structured mereologically as well as constitutively, i.e., how is it built from its parts while also being constituted by its material basis? How do pluralities sum to create larger objects while providing a material basis needed to constitute an object? Call the puzzle about how these ways of building are related the structural puzzle. It asks: how is the compositional structure of the world related to the constitutive structure of the world? A natural thought, when trying to solve these puzzles for either the monist or the pluralist, is to think that the asymmetry puzzle, the mereology puzzle, and the structural puzzle are somehow related. Perhaps, once we understand the mereological facts we will have an explanation for the world’s asymmetries and structure. Below, I will look at one way to make sense of compositional structure as connected to the debate about the nature of material constitution. An obvious way to explore an account of the compositional structure of the world is to start with the account of different levels of science described by Oppenheim and Putnam (1958). In this classic article, they argue that the world as described and organized by science has multiple levels of objects ordered by the mereological relation of spatio584 The Puzzles of Material Constitution a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 579–590, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00302.x Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd temporal part to whole. Oppenheim and Putnam categorize and present the objects belonging to different levels this way: 6...........social groups 5...........(multicellular) living things 4...........cells 3...........molecules 2...........atoms 1...........elementary particles.