The
following is a commentary on the first and last sections ( 'The
Ontology of Composite Material Objects' and 'What Should We
Believe?') of Theodore Sider's paper 'Ontological
Realism'; which is included in the book Metametaphysics:
New Essays on the Foundations of Metaphysics.
Just
as Sider's first and last sections are more or less introductory in
nature; so is this commentary. I'll attempt to tackle the more
technical sections within Sider's paper subsequently.
Ted
Sider on Metaphysics
Ted
Sider tells us what he takes metaphysics to be. (Or, perhaps, he
tells us what he thinks metaphysics should be.) He writes: “The
point of metaphysics is to discern the fundamental structure of the
world.” What's more, “[t]hat requires choosing fundamental
notions with which to describe the world".
Metaphysics,
according to Sider, can even have practical or pragmatic value. For
example, Sider says that “it’s good to choose a set of
fundamental notions that make previously intractable questions
evaporate”. Indeed Sider continues by saying that “no one other
than a positivist can make all the hard questions evaporate”.
Finally: “There’s no detour around the entirety of fundamental
metaphysics.”
Sider
makes it plain that metaphysics asks fundamental and important
questions by asking the reader this question: “Was Reichenbach wrong?—
is there a genuine question of whether spacetime is flat or curved?”
The obvious response to this is to ask if that's a scientific (i.e., not a
metaphysical) question. Unless it's the case that metaphysics can
offer insights on this which the physicist is incapable of. (More technically, Sider cites Quine's
work and the quantification of logical and metaphysical structure as
the means to establish an answer to this question.)
Sider
also gets to the heart of the matter (at least in the debate between
metaphysical realism and what he calls “deflationism”) when he
states the following:
“Everyone
faces the question of what is ‘real’ and what is the mere
projection of our conceptual apparatus, of which issues are
substantive and which are ‘mere bookkeeping’.”
That's
certainly not true about everyone; just most - not even all -
philosophers. Sure, it's true that many laypersons are concerned with
what is real. However, they don't also think in terms of the
possibility that it's our “conceptual apparatus” that hides –
or may hide – the real. Many laypersons believe that other things
hide the real: lies, propaganda, “the media”, politicians,
religions, drugs and even science and philosophy.
Nonetheless,
the philosophical issue of realism does indeed spread beyond
philosophy. Take science:
“This
is true within science as well as philosophy: one must decide when
competing scientific theories are mere notational variants. Does a
metric-system physics genuinely disagree with a system phrased in
terms of ontological realism feet and pounds? We all think not.”
Or
take Donald Davidson's less theoretical example of centigrade
and Fahrenheit. These are two modes of expression of the same
thing. However, Sider asks if the same can be said of “a
metric-system physics” and a “ontological realism feet and
pounds”. Does this position have much to do with what's called
“empirical/observational
equivalence”? If it does, then theories which are
empirically equivalent needn't also be theoretically identical. They're
equivalent in that they also carry the same weight. Sider writes:
“Unless
one is prepared to take the verificationist’s easy way out, and say
that ‘theories are the same when empirically equivalent’, one
must face difficult questions about where to draw the line between
objective structure and conceptual projection.”
The
Ontology of the Composition of Objects
Ted
Sider is explicit about his defence of this area of metaphysics. He
states:
“I,
on the other hand, accept a very strong realism about ontology. I
think that questions about the existence of composite objects are
substantive, just as substantive as the question of whether there are
extra-terrestrials; and I think that the contemporary ontologists are
approaching these questions in essentially the right way.”
The
debate about ontological composition is “substantive” (as word
which Sider uses a lot) if one accepts the legitimacy of a question
which he asks his readers. Thus:
“...
we could ask: ‘is there any context in which it would be true to
say ‘‘there are tables and chairs’’?’ It is hard to see how
you could block the legitimacy of this question; and if it is
phrasable in your fundamental language, it is substantive and
nonverbal.”
Is
Sider truly saying that the legitimacy of this statement (“there
are tables and chairs”) can be questioned when it even comes to
everyday (or “ordinary”) language-use? After all, he does say
“any context”.
I
must be honest here. The debate about the ontology of the composition/constitution of objects sometimes irritates me. It's one of the few
subjects in metaphysics which does so. Perhaps I'm a philosophical philistine;
though, as just said, I don't feel this way about any other of the
main subjects in metaphysics. (Perhaps I would do about some of the
minor subjects; though I would need to know what they are and none
spring immediately to mind.) Perhaps I'm missing the substantive
realities of these debates. Then again, perhaps there is nothing substantive to them. On the other hand, objectual
composition may be as substantive as any other subject in
metaphysics. Thus it may be just a quirk of my own mind that I sometimes find this subject annoying.
In
any case, many positions in the
ontology of object composition seem extreme. Sider himself
cites some of them. For example, “the nihilists have a very quick
solution to the old puzzle of the statue and the lump of clay:
neither exists!”. Then we have the case in which “[o]thers said
that nothing you could do to the objects would make them compose
something further”.
Thus
what does Sider have to say about all this? After all, this truly is
his own bag.
Interestingly
enough (as just stated), Sider himself seems to think that
some of these beliefs are ridiculous. For example, he writes:
“No
matter what you do to the objects, they’ll always compose something
further, no matter how they are arranged. Thus we learned of the
fusion of the coins in our pockets with the Eiffel Tower.”
Perhaps
the position advanced above about coins and the Eiffel Tower fusing
together (to make another bone fide object) is a metaphysician's way
of saying that the debate itself is ridiculous. In other words, the
position is an example of “postmodern irony” within analytic
metaphysics.
Another
position in ontological composition (as stated by Sider) simply seems
trite or stupid (or both). Sider writes:
“...
objects have to be fastened together in some way, the way the parts
of the things we usually think about are.”
Then
again, Sider gives a sensible repost to this when he says:
“But
van Inwagen taught us of people stuck or glued or sewn or fused to
each other. Such entanglements, van Inwagen thought, create no new
entities.”
Perhaps
the position of “mereological nihilists” is, prima facie,
the most ridiculous of all. Sider writes:
“According
to these ‘mereological nihilists’, tables, chairs, computers,
molecules, people, and other composite objects, simply don’t exist.
All that exist are simples—entities without further parts;
subatomic particles presumably—which are ‘arranged table-wise’,
‘arranged chair-wise’, and so on.”
It may of course be the case that I simply don't understand the
arguments. It may also be that I don't want to understand the
arguments. More relevantly, these issues may well be substantive
without me knowing it. They may be substantive without anyone
(except mereological nihilists and Sider) knowing it.
Finally,
there's a position which appears to be quite arbitrary; which Sider
himself acknowledges. That's the position of Peter van Inwagen.
According to Sider,
“Van
Inwagen himself also dispensed with tables and chairs, but departed
from the nihilists by admitting people and other living things into
his ontology.”
As
a response to that position, Sider states (in parenthesis): “Why he
spared the living few could tell.”
Conceptual
Analysis and Deflationism
Sider
asks a couple of good questions of deflationists and philistines like
myself. He asks:
“Is
your rejection of ontological realism based on the desire to make
unanswerable questions go away, to avoid questions that resist direct
empirical methods but are nevertheless not answerable by conceptual
analysis?”
It's
hardly surprising - if we take the positions above (alongside my
earlier personal reactions) - that
Sider himself has heard “[w]hispers that something was wrong
with the debate itself”. Despite that, according to Sider:
“Today’s
ontologists are not conceptual analysts; few attend to ordinary usage
of sentences like ‘chairs exist’.”
I'm tempted to say that ontologists
should indulge in a bit of conceptual analysis! I don't mean
that conceptual analysis should be the beginning and the end of
metaphysics; only that it may help things. Thus Sider's statement
begs the following question: What wrong with (a little) conceptual
analysis? Who knows, Sider may well have answered that question
elsewhere. Indirectly, Sider does comment on conceptual analysis; or
at least on what is called ontological deflationism. Sider
writes:
“These
critics—‘ontological deflationists’, I’ll call them—have
said instead something more like what the positivists said about
nearly all of philosophy: that there is something wrong with
ontological questions themselves. Other than questions of conceptual
analysis, there are no sensible questions of (philosophical)
ontology. Certainly there are no questions that are fit to debate in
the manner of the ontologists.”
Sider
states the position of ontological deflationists; though, here at
least, he doesn't offer a criticism of their position.
In
terms of conceptual analysis and ontological deflationism being
relevant to the composition/constitution of objects, Sider writes:
“...
when some particles are arranged tablewise, there is no ‘substantive’
question of whether there also exists a table composed of those
particles, they say. There are simply different—and equally
good—ways to talk.”
Ontological
Structure and Quantification
What
is realist in Sider's ontological realism is “objective
structure”. This does the work done in the past by objects,
entities, events, laws, essences, conditions, etc.
It's
interesting that Sider stresses the importance of structure in
both science and metaphysics considering the fact that analytic
metaphysicians just like Sider are the main enemy of, for example,
ontic structural realists; whom also stress structure. (See
my 'The
Basics of Ladyman and Ross's Case Against Analytic Metaphysics'.)
For example, Sider says that some questions “are questions of
structure”. That is, “how much structure is there in the world?”.
Sider gets more technical when he says that
“Quine’s
(1948) criterion for ontological commitment is good as far as it
goes: believe in those entities that your best theory says exists....
believe in as much structure as your best theory of the world
posits”.
Does
the expression of ontological commitment in the language of
quantifiers automatically solve our problems? (Hilary
Putnam once sarcastically
said that he believed that “part of the appeal of mathematical
logic is that the formulas look mysterious – you write backward
Es!”.)
Even
Sider's locution “[i]f quantifiers carve at the joints” seems
nonsensical. How can quantifiers (which are only logical symbols, if
with a role and even "content") carve anything? (They're not sharp enough.) Less
literally, shouldn't it be said that quantifiers quantify and
describe the world as (if it is) carved at the joints? In other
words, not even ontology does the carving: it describes, explains,
justifies and accepts the ontological and/or scientific carvings (into
natural kinds, etc.) of the world. Then logic codifies that
world-as-carved. It's only then that we can see ontology as ‘factual’
and ‘deep’.
Put
simply, the quantificational statement ∃x
(x = F) simply codifies our ontological positions. It
doesn't explain (at least, not entirely), justify, or describe (at
least not entirely) them.
In
any case, Sider gives his own example. He states:
“...
‘there is an F such that ...’, where F must be
replaced by a sortal predicate, rather than the bare quantifier of
predicate logic.”
That's
not ontology – it's logic. Or, at the most, it's the logical
codification of an ontological position. Or, as Sider puts it, the
statement there is a F such that... “would not make all the
ontological questions go away”. In other words, the substitution
of an F for an x doesn't help. That's the case because
“we could ask what the range of sortals is”. This is an important
ontological question and not simply one of logical codification.
After all, after someone has used the sortal F, Sider's asks
us if there is “any sortal F such that #there is an F
that is composed of me and the Eiffel tower is true?”. (Sider also
offers us [person] and [subatomic particle] as less extreme examples
of a sortal.) Could there be the following sortal? Namely, [Ted Sider
and – or fused with - the Eiffel tower]? To state the obvious,
sortals (at least here) concern objects which could include the
fusion of Sider and the Eiffel tower (or even Quine's “rabbit
fusions”). The logical codification of such things is
unconcerned with what objects are posited or accepted. That's the
job of the scientist and/or ontologist and these questions arise
before logical codification... or they should do.
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