Ayers - Individuals Without Sortals

Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Individuals without Sortals Author(s): Michael R. Ayers Source: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Sep., 1974), pp. 113-148 Published by: Canadian Journal of Philosophy Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40230490 . Accessed: 17/07/2013 05:47
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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume IV, Number 7, September 1974
Individuals
Without
Sortals
MICHAEL R. AYERS, Wadham College, Oxford
of the counting and reidentification of particulars leads Consideration an naturally enough to the orthodox doctrine that, Mon pain of indefiniteness,"1 in some way involves or presupposes a general term or identity statement or criterion of "covering concept1': i.e., that the principium individuationis identity implied depends upon the kind of thing in question. Thus it is said that an auditor understands the question whether A is the same as B only in so far as he knows, however informally or implicitly, the answer to the supplementary question, 'The same what?" It is true that there are disputes.2 Some hold that the "covering concept" completes, in each proposition, the incomplete concept of identity, determining, as it were, the kind of sameness involved; while others strongly deny that identity itself is an incomplete concept, preferring to locate the function of the within the acts of reference necessary to any identity covering concept statement. On the latter view, simply in order to have something definite in mind, we must know what kind of thing it is essentially. It is perhaps something of an oversimplification, but a suggestive one, to say that the dispute concerns the question whether or not the sentence "A is the same man as B" can be explicated by the sentence "The man A is identical with the man B." My own present concern, however, is with the possibility that this sort of dispute overlies some common assumption itself deserving critical examination. Now it is, I believe, indisputable that if a speaker indicates something, e.g. then in order fpr other people to catch his reference, and to demonstratively, understand what he is indicating,' they must know, at some level of generality,
1 David Wiggins, Identity and Spatio-Temporal
Continuity
(Oxford,
1 967), p. 27.
2 Represented, e.g., by Geach on the one side and Quine on the other: vid. P. T. Geach, "Identity," Review of Metaphysics, XXI (1967); and W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (2nd ed.; New York, 1961), pp. 67f.; cf. John Perry, "The Same F ," Philosophical Review, LXXIX (1970).
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what kind of thing he is intending to indicate. They must certainly know what category of thing it is: whether it is an event, a physical object, a quality or to think about whatever. It is, with unimportant impossible exceptions, the knowledge But that much it. does without about something knowing extend further in this direction? Must it be known necessary for identification not only that the object of reference is an event or process, but that it is specifically an explosion, a cricket-match or a fit of anger? The plausibility and popularity of the view that such further knowledge is indeed necessary stems, as I have said, partly from the topic of identity through time and partly from the nature of number. If someone says no more than "It will be over in one hour's time," he would naturally be taken to speak of an event or process, but it will be impossible to know whether his assertion is true unless we know more: e.g. that he was referring to the bombardment rather than to the battle or .to the war. Likewise we cannot count events merely, we must know what sort of event to count. of events also true of the Yet is what is true of the identification identification of physical objects or "things" in the narrow sense? If we can show that it is not, and I believe that we can, then a direct, refreshingly "logical" rather than "epistemological" route is opened up towards the theory that rightly enjoys some popularity, namely that there is something central and fundamental For their about this category of individuals, the "primary substances." of would then appear peculiarly "absolute" and independent individuality human concepts or ways of looking at the world. such a prospect with equanimity Philosophers who would contemplate might be called "realists," and their opponents "conceptualists." This, at any rate, is the dichotomy that I shall adopt for convenience, although admittedly it does less than justice to the possibilities. There could, for example, be quasi-Kantian conceptual ists who allowed an ineluctable primacy to the category of physical object in "our conceptual scheme." I shall return, very briefly, to the metaphysical issue, but for the most part my concern will be with the independently important suggestion that much that is regularly alleged about the individuating function of "sortal" concepts is completely false. Adopting, then, a "realist" tone of voice, let me first say that physical objects are natural unities or natural structures which come into existence, continue to exist and cease to exist quite independently of any conceptualizing on bur part.3 The principle of unity in each case is causal: it is a proper object of natural science, and may be known or unknown to human beings, who are themselves of such unities. Less perhaps the most remarkable examples remarkable are coherent lumps of metal, stone, hardened mud and so on; and
3 Neither object.
here nor elsewhere
am I attempting
to define
the category
of physical
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Individuals without Sortals

simple cohesion, however it is to be explained in each case, is an important natural principle of unity. For this rather primitive kind of thing, ceasing to exist characteristically consists in breaking into pieces, and continuing to exist, in not doing so. There is nothing "ideal" about such unities, as a man will discover when a heavy and relatively indissoluble one drops on his toe. If it remains there immovably, it does so with an ungentle disregard for his conceptual scheme. A fact that has been known or guessed for a very long time is that many such unities or things depend for their continuing existence on the continuous utilization, dissipation and replacement of the stuff that composes them, just a little like a bonfire and very remotely like a river. This consideration seems to have worried some early thinkers, especially on top of some purely logical perplexities about change in general, or a thing's becoming what it is not. But soon, if not immediately, the worry found resolution in the reflection that the of this independent reality of the logos of the whole, and the continuity principle of unity, is not cast in doubt by the process-like character of its operation. This line of thought, while valuable, proved also dangerous. For the present let it stand. Yet when a we are often told, presupposes classification. Identification, man is presented with some quite strange thing, a simple creature, say, or its skeleton, or a crystal, or an amorphous but coherent lump of some unknown substance, he does not need a preformed concept, none at least less general or primitive than "thing," in order to decide, become aware or guess that he is confronted by a thing with some sort of synchronic unity. Nor need there be, with this realization, simultaneous or any relevant conceptualization classification of the thing as a member of a specific kind. Consequently there need be no such general concept or sortal in terms of which a judgment about the object must be expressed or understood- "Here is a queer thing" is not elliptical. By the same token the man can be aware of the continuity of the thing over a period of observation, its diachronic unity, without bothering his head about what sort or species of thing he has picked up and is carrying about in his hand. He may not even know whether the object is animate or inanimate. It is a corollary that he need not know, prior to further observation, what alteration this thing is liable to undergo or is capable of surviving. In such a state of ignorance he would be rash to emulate Linnaeus, and before trying his hand at he had better wait and see what the object does, or perhaps classification conduct experiments upon it. Yet according to the clearest advice of the actively or "Same what?" theory, our observer cannot even regard it as a conceptualist thing, or at any rate as a thing capable of continuity, except under some sortal concept that will automatically determine what is essential to it and what not, and under what conditions it will cease to exist. I do It may be helpful to remove a common source of misunderstanding. not particularly wish to deny that in order to identify or be aware of some object before him a man must be aware of it as possessing certain recognizable
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properties over and above its position in space. In this trivial sense specific Let us "conceptual ization" and classification may be involved in identification. as this small, suppose that a man identifies something in his neighbourhood round, fluffy, yellow thing that squeaks when pushed. The significant point is that the content of this adequate identifying description of a chick does not touch the basis of its unity and continuity, which may be quite unknown. Every of the thing property that figures in an initial and adequate identification (except, as Descartes saw, its occupancy of space) may presently pass from it to the surprise, perhaps, of the observer, without giving the least ground for the judgment that the object thus identified has ceased to exist. It is a fact about the world (reflected, no doubt, in our concept chick) that the possessors of these particular observable properties do not in general keep them until the end of their existence, but lose them when they become hens. If, after such a transition, we are sentimentally inclined to talk as if the chick itself no longer exists, the pretended existential discontinuity might well be described as "ideal." The continuity, by contrast, is real. What I am here denying appears to be expressed very admirably, if without evident justification, by David Wiggins in his recent book, when, after remarking that "we cannot single out bare space-occupying matter," he writes, "How we do our singling out determines both what we single out, and (which is the same thing) the principle of individuation of what we single out, and (again the same thing) the conditions of existence of what we have singled out.1'4 A serious objection to conceptualism, therefore, is that the life-histories of natural things have to be discovered, often gradually and with difficulty, and so cannot be supposed to be determined by an observer's conceptual scheme. The I think, meet with a pragmatist or instrumentalist objection would sometimes, interpretation of such discovery. On this interpretation experience may in some unexplained way lead us to drop some part of our conceptual scheme as not "pragmatically acceptable": e.g., a part incorporating the distinction between maggots and houseflies as a specific difference on a level with the difference between sheep and goats. In order to think the continuity that, on the ordinary way of talking, was discovered between maggot and insect, we must do so (the argument continues) under a new covering concept of (e.g.) fly such that a fly is first a larva, then a pupa, then an adult fly. In the circumstances of our experience, it will be said, the new scheme will strike us as "natural," and the so-called discovery of a continuity can be seen to consist in the discovery that the fresh suit of conceptual clothes is indeed "pragmatically acceptable." By this or some equally elaborate story reality can be kept at a proper distance. Yet it must be remarked that as an account of the observation of continuity it has no independent plausibility whatsoever, and so is vulnerable to the charge that it is
4 Wiggins, op. eft., p. 42.
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merely doctrinaire.5 A very much more attractive view is that no observer who becomes acquainted with what goes on from pupation to emergence could rationally take it to involve the cessation of the existence of a maggot or indeed of any thing whatsoever from any conceivable point of view. For, on the assumption that he is not simply mistaken about the general character of the underlying causal process (as he might have been had he observed the emergence of an ichneumon wasp from a parasitized pupa), he has witnessed a continuity and nothing else. It is a trivial, indeed tautologous point that at the same time he must suppose that he is observing a thing of such a kind as can survive the observed metamorphosis. What is important is that the recognition of the fact of continuity is logically independent of the possession of sortal concepts, whereas the formation of the sortal concept is at least psychologically dependent, in normal cases, upon the recognition of continuity. It should not come as a surprise that a fact that can be independently recognized can be independently stated. Why then is it so popularly supposed that the judgment of continuity in such cases is either relative to a preconceived sortal or else essentially involves the formation of a sortal concept as a more or less arbitrary, even if also more or less "natural" procedure, as if it were possible to define or conceptualize things and their continuity into and out of existence?6 Part of the answer lies, I believe, in supposed analogies with other kinds of case, and traditional but questionable assumptions about the best description of the latter. The cases that dominate the literature need to be re-examined.
Problems and Paradoxes
Proponents of the conceptualist or "sortalist" theory of continuity have recently become clear that they fall into two camps, and the mutual criticism does useful damage. The view that is perhaps the more difficult to maintain, although neither is easy, holds it possible (or so it seems at first) that A should be the same g as B and yet not be the same fas B. We seem to be encouraged to think in terms of /"-samenessand ^-sameness, f-continuity and ^-continuity, the nature of each being determined by the concepts f and g: thus, it is possible that
5 A not dissimilar account, which no longer has its author's Wiggins, ibid., pp. 59 and 69f . approval, is given by
will not avoid the point of this 6 Recourse to a Fregean notion of objectivity cf. "The objectivity of the North Sea is not affected by the fact characterization: that it is a matter of our arbitrary choice which part of all the water on the earth's surface we mark off and elect to call the 'North Sea'." (G. Frege: The Foundations of Arithmetic, trans. J. L. Austin [Oxford, 1968].) For the point is precisely that the spatial and temporal limits of a physical object are not a matter for our arbitrary choice.
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Michael R. Ayers
b0th A = B and A * B
g f_ Let us consider a case: a bottle A is melted down and recast as a jampot, B. A is the same piece of glass as B, but not the same bottle as B. Schema 1 f A = i the bottle = the piece of glass 1 = bottle , = piece of glass ( the jampot = the piece of glass * 1 = B.
Now if such a case is to support the view in question, it cannot merely be because "A is the same piece of glass as B" expresses a truth while "A is the same bottle as B" does not. For the latter may be false or otherwise unacceptable simply because B is not a bottle. The contrast would then illustrate one restriction on the use of expressions of the form "the same f* (i.e. both terms must be fs7) but could hardly supply a reason for believing that such are always either used or presupposed. The argument therefore expressions discontinuous requires that A is positively with, or other than, B under the concept bottle, on the same level as it is continuous with, or the same as B under the concept piece of glass. That is to say, we must suppose that A ceases to exist under the former concept yet continues to exist under the latter. We are not asked to believe that a bottle has ceased to exist while a piece of glass continues to exist; for the bottle continues to exist under the concept piece of glass, while the piece of glass has ceased to exist, under the concept bottle. It is a compensation, perhaps, that the bottle, and so the piece of glass, can look forward to coming into existence, under the concept Jampot The jampot itself does not, of course, simply come into existence. It was previously in existence, after all, under the concept bottle, and for longer, and more recently, under the concept piece of glass. Indeed, had the piece of glass been made into a new bottle, an individual would have gone out of existence and come into existence under the same concept. These excesses could be avoided, it may seem, if we jettison substitutivity; e.g., if we say that, even though the bottle and the piece of glass are the same individual thing, A, yet the piece of glass can continue to exist while the bottle does not. This supposition, however, appears merely unintelligible, since, given
7 Another is that the individual relevant lapse of time.
must be supposed
to have been an f throughout
any
118

the identity, what else are we given if not that the piece of glass can itself be referred to as "the bottle"? Moreover, the whole account leaves us wondering why covering concepts are required for diachronic identities, when they must be supposed unnecessary for synchronic identities. A different kind of example is favoured by Peter Geach in his defense of this view. If I talk to the Prime Minister before and after an election, I shall be talking to the same official but perhaps to a different man on the two occasions. If I write down the letter A twice, then what I write the second time is the same type-letter but not the same token-letter as what I wrote the first time.8 Now in some such cases, perhaps, two sorts of continuity may seem to be involved. But one is not spatio-temporal and the real subject is not a concrete continuity, individual. In fact no sort of continuity is implicit in "is the same official as," not even the continuity of a conventional role, since the title might have been in abeyance. But .certainly it is an abstract particular, the office held, not such individuals as Wilson and Heath, that can most reasonably be regarded as the true subject of any identity here. That is to say, "Heath is the same man as Wilson" entails "Heath is Wilson" tout court, whereas "Heath is the same official as Wilson (was)" entails no such thing, but means merely that Heath holds the same office that Wilson held. We may note that there is a perfectly good sense in which "Heath is the same official as Wilson" is false, and a perfectly good sense in which, simply because they are different individuals, it is false that in talking to both I have talked to the same official twice- just as it is false that (in one natural sense) I have talked to the same Prime Minister twice. A rather disastrous theory of proper names can attempt to disguise these differences by asserting that proper names too are sortal-relative, and that "Wilson" and "Heath" happen to be relative to the sortal man, while another name, say "P.M.," might be relative to the sortal Prime Minister or official. Thus in the glass bottle example, the individual that is both a bottle and a piece of glass could only be referred to as "A" under one sortal or the other. But the disguise is as thin as the theory, and there is no more temporal continuity of the kind on which an identity judgment could be founded between individual successive prime ministers than there is spatial continuity between contemporary heads of state, even when they merits similar and type-word are shaking hands. The case of token-word can make two separate marks on paper No covering concept treatment. numerically the same individual, whether it is space and time or only space that separates them. The true subject of the identity, the type-word, is an abstract entity, beyond destruction, as the marks on paper can never be. Perhaps it is the efficacy of this resolution of such cases, which we can understand by distinguishing categorially different subjects of the two identity
8 Cf. Geach, Reference and Generality
(Ithaca, N. Y., 1962), p. 157 and p. 10.
9 Further criticism of Geach appears in Perry, op. cit.
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that encourages opponents of Geach's view in their belief that a statements, distinction between subjects will be an equally effective treatment of the first type of case that we considered, in the example of the glass bottle. But that case were was different in that both the alleged continuity and the discontinuity a bottle is as straightforwardly a concrete individual, a spatio-temporal: non-abstract, material particular, as is a piece of glass. Thus the distinction between subjects here produces the paradox, as Locke might have put it, of two bodies in the same place at the same time. The move that is made can be represented as follows: Schema 2 A = the bottle = the jampot = B
A'
the piece of glass
the piece of glass
B'
and transitivity are preserved, but at what cost! We are assured Substitutivity that it is not paradoxical to distinguish the bottle from the piece of glass because it is better to do so than to accept the alternative: there is no multiplication of entities beyond necessity, simply because it is necessary to multiply them, one on top of the other.10 We shall find that there is no such compulsion, but now let us notice some odd implications of the doctrine. It might appear, first, that if I point at an object and say "That is a bottle," what I say is either tautologous or false or not what it seems. For if "that" refers to the piece of glass, the is false, and if to the bottle, the proposition proposition is, so to speak, tautologous. Otherwise we must say that the true predicate is not "is a bottle" but something else, e.g. "constitutes a bottle," which is even at first blush a It seems to me to be virtually a datum for queer and undesirable complication. of that is reference it any theory possible to refer to certain pieces of marble as statues, and vice versa. Moreover, in such a case, the statue is marble and man-shaped, but so is the piece of marble; so not only are there supposed to be two objects in the same place, there are two marble and man-shaped objects in the same place, so that the definite description, "the marble, man-shaped object over there" must be supposed an ambiguous or indefinite mode of reference. The only non-ambiguous mode of reference must involve a sortal concept. This of proponents of the is well in line with explicit pronouncements consequence 1 but seems to me quite contrary to ordinary intuitions about doctrine,1 reference.
10 a. ibid., pp. 198t. 1 1 See footnote 4, above.
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An attempt is made to soften the paradox of numerically distinct objects occupying precisely the same space* and the issue can be said to hang upon its success. It is admitted that there is indeed an intimate relation between such i r\ Some ingenuity has objects, although it is not identity, or not strict identity. gone into the effort to tell us what this relationship is, but the results are disappointing. According to Wiggins, it is correct to say that the statue is a piece but the "is" of of marble, but the "is" is not the "is" of predication by," and so on. Yet this constitution, meaning "is made of," "is constituted explanation would only look adequate on the unnatural and question-begging assumption that the statement "The statue is composed of a single piece of marble" does not by itself entail the straightforward predication, "The statue is a single piece of marble." Furthermore the relation seems symmetrical, whereas a piece of marble can hardly be composed of a statue. It has therefore been argued that, strictly speaking, it is the relation "is composed of the same matter as." Yet this move, believed by Sydney Shoemaker to be an improvement on Wiggins* account, merely renders it more obviously paradoxical. For it is not so much occupancy with of the same space on its own that seems in such cases incompatible numerical diversity, but the having of all matter or parts in common. It is an attractive doctrine of Aquinas that the principle of individuation of physical things is "matter subject to dimension," a doctrine that finds an echo in one of the least questionable aspects of Goodman's "Calculus of Individuals," his account of identity: roughly, a and b are identical if there is exact overlap, i.e. if every part of each is a part of the other.14 In the face of this tradition, and common sense, to offer is composed of the same matter as as an alternative to strict identity is palpably question-begging, being at least as paradoxical as the does not after all that spatial position assertion unadorned original 5 individuate.1
12 S. Shoemaker, in "Wiggins on Identity," Philosophical Review, LXXIX (1970), 531, says that in ordinary language the relation can be expressed by "are one and the same thing" although it is not identity, merely "especially easy to confuse with identity"! 13 Ibid. 14 Nelson 42-55. Goodman, The Structure of Appearance (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), pp.
individuates has been contested 15 Perhaps more so: the claim that space-occupancy without much relevance to the present issue) by an appeal to the (admittedly alleged logical possibility of one object's passing through another. Such a possibility would not entail the possibility that every part of each should become a part of the other and yet diversity be maintained. (Moreover it is arguable that the passage of A through B is only logically possible on the supposition that at some level each has parts that do not occupy the same space as parts of the other: e.g., atoms.)
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Another account is popular with some. If a piece of clay is moulded into the form of a man, and is then returned to a formless lump, it exists, so it is said, both before and after the image. It therefore cannot, so it is argued, be identical with the image. We are now invited to regard the image as a "temporal part" or "stage" of the piece of clay. The overlapping of different things thus seems harmless enough, like the overlapping of a man and his own leg. The introduction of the concept of a momentary stage constitutes a refinement of the theory. It has some apparent utility in preventing the part-whole relation from becoming potentially mutual. For, in the ancient example, there might seem to be no less reason to claim that the river is a temporal part of the mass of water than that the mass of water is a temporal part of the river, a possibility clearly obnoxious to part-whole logic. It is therefore said that the river and the mass of water that at some time composes it, share a momentary part. Thus the intimate relation between image and piece of clay consists in the fact that consecutive "stages" of the one are identical with consecutive "stages" of the 6 other.1 They share temporal parts in such a way, in this particular case, that all the parts of the image are parts of the piece of clay but not vice versa. Quine, in his presentation of the theory, implies that what determines that any particular stage is a part of this, that or the other thing will be human conceptualization, whether verbalized or of some less formal kind. The notion of "momentary stages" is as artificial as the notion of the planes or points that may be said by some to make up real three-dimensional objects. Simply for this reason they cannot be taken seriously as candidates for the status of parts. Like mathematical points, they cannot be ostensively identified. Yet even if we overlook their peculiar transitoriness (necessary as it is to such to their apparent philosophical utility), there are other objections still are extended Even mysteriously "parts" temporally temporal "parts." inseparable and not subject to rearrangement: a thing cannot be cut temporally in half. Much more importantly, to pretend that there are any discontinuities between these entities that require bridging, and so can be bridged, by some human conceptual scheme is to indulge in precisely the kind of idealization in that the realist would very properly contrast with real relation to discontinuity In this respect a momentary stage is no different from a discontinuity. five-minute stage. The invention of a concept of a five-minute man, and an insistence that the life history of each of us consists in a succession of briefly existing five-minute men, is an empty business that provides no analogue for the real destruction of a real man. This kind of five-minute man (i.e., not the unfortunate possible creature that genuinely has a life-span of only five minutes) has a causal unity that continues unaffected when his time is up. The same goes for a momentary "man-stage," for even this entity, if it has a synchronic unity,
16 Cf. Quine, op. cit., pp. 65f., and Perry, op. cit., p. 199.
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has precisely that of a man. In fact we cannot separate, even in thought, the synchronic from the diachronic unity of a thing, as cohesion sufficiently demonstrates: there is no sense in talk of momentary cohesion. There is no more warrant for the theory that a human conceptual scheme can define the temporal limits of a thing's existence than for the view that it can determine a thing's spatial extent. Some shrink from neither opinion. Discussing Hume, Terence Penelhum If we tells us that identity "depends entirely on what concepts we are using .... heard a continuous sound we would say it was one sound and not several; but it is not hard to imagine some situation in which we would be interested in counting the number of seconds of sound, in which case we would say there were, for example, ten of them."17 This claim is interestingly ambivalent. Counting units of time is undeniably different from counting sounds, and the answer to the question "How many units of time did the sound last?" obviously such as second. Yet, from the unit-concept presupposes some determinate context, Penelhum must want us to conclude that it is our concepts which impose unity or diversity on the phenomenon and, indeed, on anything at all; he must be making a claim of the same character as Berkeley's consequently assertion that number is relative because "the same extension is one, or three, or thirty-six, according as the mind views it with reference to a yard, a foot or an inch."1"8 But if it were so easy to impugn the real unity or number of a thing it would be as possible as it would be convenient for a man to view the boulder on his foot as a heap of pebbles. Perhaps this foray against high conceptualism is an unnecessary digression. of as For, generally happens with such technical devjces, the postulation "momentary parts" merely complicates without resolving the difficulty before us. It seems a reasonable first assumption that all statues stand in the same relation (whatever it is) to the particular pieces of clay that compose them. Let us then imagine that a particular statue and its overlapping piece of clay happen to come into existence at the same time, being built up by the handful, and also happen to be demolished together. As in the earlier example, during the time that both exist there is nothing that is a spatial part of either that is not part of the other; but in this case, there is equally nothing that is a temporal part of either that is not a temporal part of the other. Part-whole logic, certainly as normally applied to events and processes, here requires identity. Thus it can hardly come to the assistance of the "division of subjects" thesis with which, indeed, it is incompatible. In other words, the argument for the division theory that appeals to the
17 "Hume on Personal Identity," below, on measurement. 18 Principles of Human Knowledge,,
Philosophical Part I, 12.
Review,
LXIV (1955).
Cf. p.
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notion of a "stage" should lead to the conclusion, not that the relation between a statue and the piece of clay composing it is not identity, but that we cannot know whether or not it is identity unless we happen to know how each began and will cease to exist. We shall even be able, given our powers of demolition, actively to determine as we choose whether some particular statue should be identical with or diverse from the piece of clay that composes it. Lastly, unless we do happen to know whether the relation between statue and piece of clay is identity, we shall not know whether it is possible to refer to the statue as "that piece of clay" and vice versa. These frills on the division theory hold little promise of an attractive account of reference, and do nothing to render the theory itself less paradoxical.
Realist Solutions
(i) It remains to offer a more realistic explanation of the examples on which the conceptualist case commonly rests. The general form of this explanation is simple. We need only insist that, where there is diachronic identity, there cannot also be diachronic diversity. Thus we have to choose, not arbitrarily, but according to the facts of each case, between the two possibilities illustrated as follows: Schema 3 the bottle A = = the piece of glass Schema 4 the bottle A = the piece of glass * the piece of glass the jampot B = the piece of glass the jampot B
Disregarding a complication that will be discussed later, we can say that the relevant facts in this particular example lie in what happens in the process of remanufacture. For example, can we regard a molten lump of glass as a unified thing, with an internal principle of unity? If not, then the piece of glass is destroyed with the bottle, and Schema 4 applies. Otherwise Schema 3 is
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applicable. This is a question about which I neither need nor intend to be decisive. For if there are cases on this borderline, their existence is no solace to those who advocate Schema 1 or Schema 2. It is also important to see that the question of continuity is quite independent of the concept piece of glass. It is quite possible that, if we decide for continuity, we shall also be prepared to say that the molten glass constitutes a piece of glass. But perhaps we shall not, and linguistic overtones may incline us to talk of a lump or blob rather than apiece of molten glass. The issue of continuity is not directly affected. The sort of circumstances that would settle this issue, however, might be as follows. If we happened to know that, at some stage in the process, the glass had solidified in the form of a large number of separate globules, then B would perhaps be a new piece of glass, different from A, although made from the same material. As few would deny, two things existing at different times can be composed of the same molecules or same stuff without being the same thing. Pieces of glass seem no exception. A piece of#glass is destroyed by being split up into many pieces, but the stuff of which it was composed is not thereby destroyed, even if it is scattered to the ends of the earth. To avoid misunderstanding, it must be repeated that the difference here is not between two sortals, same glass and same piece of glass, but between the category of stuff and the category of thing. For A and B to be composed of the same stuff some sort of real spatio-temporal continuity is requisite: perhaps the requirement is fulfilled if every part of B (say, a set of dining chairs) once existed as a part of A (say, a particular tree); or perhaps the reverse relation is also requisite. But there is certainly not required the sort of continuity that would be necessary for A and B to be the same thing. For the latter is the continuity of a causal unity such as is in any case lacking when one term is a set of chairs. (ii) The discussion of a traditional and crucial example has often been seriously affected by a failure to get precisely this point clear. We are asked by Locke to accept that
an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is still the same oak; and a colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse, though in both these cases there is a manifest change of the parts, so that truly they are not either of them the same masses of matter. The reason whereof is that, in these two cases of a mass of matter and a living body, identity is not applied to the same thing.
19 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXVII, 3. Notice Locke's inconsistent adoption (at any rate, verbal) of both the modern forms of the conceptualist theory. Which of them he would have preferred is not entirely clear from the Essay.
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Many others since Locke have smuggled in the stuff/thing distinction as if it were a case of. different thing-sortals or (as his procedure might as well be described) have tried to say about the continuity of a thing what could only be true of the continuous composition of a thing by the same stuff. The term mass of matter is, in my view, best regarded as analogous to a thing-sortal like piece of giass, denoting something that can be demolished or broken up. A colt is indeed such a thing, but unified and organized, while alive, on such principles that its stuff is continuously being replaced. That is to say, the mass of matter is itself organized in this way, and thus, as much as the colt, survives replacement of parts. Its matter is gradually replaced, but it is not itself replaced by a different mass of matter. This, since the mass of matter and the colt are the same thing, is not surprising. Hence Locke is mistaken when he states that the removal or addition of one atom is enough to bring to an end the existence of a mass of matter. Nothing ceases to exist, except possibly the colt's of a particular number of atoms, and similar property of being composed non-substantial entities. This rebuttal of Locke's contention (bringing the case under Schema 3, above) is often in my experience greeted with indignation as an artifice or trick. It is, on the contrary, the exposure of a particularly misleading artifice. As the analogy with the expression "piece of glass" confirms, my understanding of the expression "mass of matter" is at least the most natural. Let us, however, consider some rival interpretations. First, we might quite intelligibly take mass of matter to mean something must involve annihilation like set of partic/es, in which case its destruction perhaps of all, but at least of one of these particles; for mere dispersal, however radical, would be not merely insufficient but irrelevant. On this reading, the sense in which one mass of matter is replaced by another would be entirely parasitic on the assumption of a continuous unity or real thing which acts as the theatre, so to speak, of such a change of cast. Thus the expressions "mass of matter" and "matter" become virtually interchangeable, and the Lockean claim reduces to the truism that a thing can survive the dispersal of the matter that, at some previous time, composed it. No argument for the "softalist" thesis can possibly emerge from this alone. Other ways of conceiving of a mass of matter are all, it seems to me, attempts to combine incompatible features of different categories of question. Locke himself requires that what he calls a mass of atoms should be causally "united i.e. like a thing, and he even uses the term body together," in his argument, with the term mass of atoms. Yet he merely interchangeably, disregards the continuity of this unity or body when he stipulates that the mass will not survive the subtraction of a single atom. (He even overtly conflates the relation "is the same mass of particles as" with the relation "is a mass of the same particles as.")20 Thus his concept of a mass or (in this context only) body is as artificial, and as misleading, as that of a "man-stage." For suppose that we
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define a man-mass as any Lockean "mass of particles" constituted or united as a man is at any moment of his life. The continuity of a man can thus be said to consist in a sequence of briefly-existent, temporally discontinuous man-masses, each replacing a previous one. This is nothing more than an eccentric and very misleading way of saying what has never been denied since Heraclitus, that the matter or parts of a man are continually being replaced. It is a misleading story because it suggests what is false, that a complex, structured, unified individual thing is every moment going out of existence and another taking its place; but also because it is mistakenly offered in support of the false general theory that continuity is always relative to a sortal concept or, as one powerful tradition has it, is a matter of words. One sometimes meets with another proposal, that the concept mass of matter be treated as equivalent to the concept of a set of parts in close local conjunction, whether or not "united together." It is then said that under such a while under another concept, e.g. horse, concept there can be discontinuity It is thought unimportant that the proposed concept is there is continuity. artificial (only roughly corresponding to heap or collection) since if any work is provided for Schema A or Schema B, by whatever device, the sortalist thesis appears to find support. Perhaps the point of the suggestion is better illustrated by a different sort of case, involving continuity rather than discontinuity under such an artificial concept. (iii) Borrowing an example, therefore (and more than the example), from let us imagine that a jug is destroyed by being smashed, while the Wiggins, "collection of parts" or "collection of china bits" that constituted it remains in existence. Now the smashing will destroy the mass of matter on the Lockean interpretation as well as on my own, although on neither interpretation is the matter or stuff itself destroyed. Locke's masses are always very fragile, while these "collections" appear, in such cases, to be rather robust. They must not be will collapse into mere survival of too robust, however, or their continuity unlike matter, can be Let us then suppose that "collections," matter.22 destroyed by local dispersal. Can they be destroyed by a second tap with a hammer? On the assumption that to destroy all the members of a collection is to destroy the collection, then if each china bit breaks into more bits, it seems that
20 The details of Locke's discussion are very interesting, as is the relation between his account of identity and his philosophy of science and notion of substance. The question why Locke, a metaphysical Realist, should adopt a conceptualist view of identity can be answered (and the structure of that view be understood) only in the light of a careful examination of his distinction between real and nominal essences, his discussion of the question whether individuals have essences, his doctrine, more subtle than might appear, that species are the work of the understanding, etc. 21 22 Op. cit.y Part I, 1 .6. The argument here criticised is not, of course, that of Wiggins. A requirement noted by Wiggins, ibid., p. 10.
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at least one collection of bits has been destroyed, and perhaps indefinitely many, as it is not difficult to see. On this view, give me a jug and you also give me indefinitely many overlapping collections of pieces. Break my jug and you break indefinitely many of these, although indefinitely many remain unbroken. Collections now appear individually less robust than at first sight, their strength lying rather in numbers. Another difficulty might be seen in the claim that the jug is even one collection of china bits. It seems an odd thing to say about an unbroken jug. The most promising line of defense might thus appear to be to fall back, like Locke, on the atomic theory, thinking in terms of particles rather than of particles can survive the parts. Must we not admit that the collection destruction of the jug, and is therefore a different thing? It is worth giving a realist's answer to all this, because it may help to is not a different thing from the jug clarify his position. First, a "collection" simply because it is not a thing at all, in the required sense: in this sense, nothing is a thing that is not an objectively discrete unity or structure. That is why, contrary to a common philosophical belief, neither the counting of things nor the determination of their beginnings and endings is arbitrary, or relative to our conceptual scheme, or a matter of words, or a mere reflection of human interests. But the limits of a "collection," on the proposed artificial definition, are intrinsically arbitrary, and counting "collections of particles" an impossible and absurd enterprise. If a cock stands on a dunghill, the particles of its feet form as genuine a "collection" with the particles of the dunghill as they do with the particles of its legs or body. It is thus easy to see how many questions are begged in the argument about the jug. One is left wondering, for example, why the particles of air in the jug or between the fragments are not included. (iv) What does happen to a statue when a vandal beats it out of shape, if it is not destroyed1. And what is a sculptor bringing about when he beats a piece of metal into shape, if he is not creating a statue? In so far as these questions do not answer themselves, a suitable reply to the first is that a piece of metal is ceasing to be a statue, and to the second, that a piece of metal is coming to be a statue. We can talk of destruction and creation if we like, for such talk can be fairly unserious, or at least detachable from considerations of substantial continuity. I can create an eyesore by cutting down a tree or destroy an aesthetic whole by painting my house red, white and blue. We could say that what the vandal is destroying is a shape or form. None of this gives any grounds for arguing that one thing, the statue, ceases to exist, while another thing, the piece of metal, continues existing. Paperweights are physical objects, and it is possible to make paperweights by scratching patterns on pebbles, but this is not a way of making into It is a way of making certain physical objects physical objects. without saleable can a A become changing at pebble paperweight paperweights. to revive made Robert a by Boyle against teleology. all, point mistake in the This kind of case illustrates a further fundamental Aristotelian form of realism, one that regrettably paved the way for
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Aristotle reasonably explained individual continuity by reference conceptualism. to the form, conceived of as a causal principle of unity; but he reified this principle, as if the embodied form could cease to exist while the still unified matter remained as an accidentally cohering, second-class thing. On the contrary, the individual statue can survive the destruction of its form, although not as a statue, or not as a statue of that form. (v) By the same token, it is wrong to say that the individual man or person ceases to exist at death. Very violent death apart, death is existed through. The individual becomes dead. "Our bodies last longer than we do" is a false dogma. This fact is independent of the question whether to call the corpse a man or a person. Even if a dead person were not really a person, this would show that an individual can cease to be a person, not that a person is an individual that ceases to exist at death. So, too, if a small infant is not to be granted the full status of a person, it does not follow that the individual who later comes to be regarded as a person, and who comes to refer to himself as "I," has not existed since birth or, for that matter, since the formation of the zygote. The concept person will not conveniently solve the moral problem of abortion. (vi) Other aspects of the so-called problem of "personal identity1' are too complex for discussion now. The division of subjects thesis will be able to draw on much of what makes substance-dualism plausible. If, however, we assume the invalidity of any notion of the psychological continuity of an individual that is or might be independent of all spatio-temporal continuity, the peculiar difficulty for an opponent of the conceptualist thesis seems to lie in the logical possibility of surgical replacement and exchange of parts as radical as any that artifacts undergo. The individuality of a person seems so tied up with his personality and cognitive powers, including his memories, that on the supposition that it became possible to transfer some part of a man, say the brain, as the bearer of these not wholly it becomes evacuated into a suitably characteristics body, unattractive to conclude that a resultant living individual would be the same person, but not the same body or perhaps even the same man as the original. On this view the person, alone logically capable of such migration, is never the same thing as the man or body, although for much of the time all three have a head, two arms, a trunk, and so on, for the while or throughout their existence having all parts in perfect unison, yet managing somehow to exist apart.
23
Cf. ibid., Part IV. I should perhaps just indicate a line of response to the argument that the body is a different thing from the man or person because bodies cannot properly be said to think or have sensations. I take it that "body" no more denotes a thing distinct from the person than does "mind" (although minds, unlike people, cannot naturally be said to be six feet tall). As distinctions between substances, I believe that these distinctions should be taken no more seriously than, e.g., a division between "my better self" and "my worse self," each of which pseudo-selves will necessarily have properties the other lacks. Because such terms are related as it were to "aspects" of a thing, they cannot be freely used to denote the thing in all
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A number of replies suggest themselves, and I am not entirely sure which is I do not much like one possibility, which is to treat the person, the thinking thing, as a part, the neural core, of the living body or man. On this view, a person does not have bones, skin and so on, and could in principle survive the destruction of the whole body in the same unparadoxical way as can an arm or finger.24 An alternative is to deoy that the individual would have survived, carried over with the transplanted brain. This response seems appropriate to some stories which concentrate as the on continuity of "memory" exclusively of a particular life history. For if a recipient's purported guarantee memory-beliefs were affected by the transfer of, say, a small amount of brain or even brain-fluid, it would be quite unjustified to conclude that the recipient was the same conscious, rational being, or person, as the original donor. The storehouse of the mind is not the whole mind, and the same could be true at the physiological level. Yet, given the prospect of surgery on a large enough scale, it may still seem that the brain-donor can look forward to a genuine, if unnatural and "disembodied" extension to his existence, while the temporarily is less fortunate. body-donor A more promising argument starts from the premise that a living human being is not just a coherent lump of stuff. Thus far the difference between mere coherence and more complex natural principles of unity has been mentioned only in connection with the power of some individuals to survive even rapid and constant of matter. But the distinction can have another replacement significance. If a lump of clay is divided in half, there is no reason for identifying one half rather than the other with the original individual, and so no reason for thinking that that individual has survived. If, on the other hand, an animal is similarly divided, but so that only one half, because of its structure, can live, there is sufficient reason for regarding this part as the surviving individual. This is so even if the living part is smaller, even considerably smaller, than the remainder, which is now to be regarded as a former part of that individual. Now the causal unity of a man is demonstrated not simply in coherence, nor in the life of the parts, but in the unified powers of sentience, intelligence, intentional action and so on. Conceivably it could be the case that, while any part may be kept "alive" in a sense, only one part could be the bearer of this best.
contexts. Yet there is much to be said for the tough line that, really, my better self sometimes behaves badly and, indeed, that it bears all properties in common with my worse self, for the reason that there are not really two selves or persons but only one. Such ontological pedantry, however, may seem to lose the point of the facon de parler. Similarly the body/person distinction has point, although a good enough reason for asserting that, after all, the body does think is that there are not two things but only one. 24 Cf. W. Sellars, "The Identity Approach Metaphysics, XVIII (1965), IV. to the Mind-Body Problem," Review of
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unified higher form of life in separation from the rest of what used to be the body (not, note, "from the body")- In that case, it would perhaps be correct to say of certain individuals- whether or not we are prepared to call them throughout their existence "human beings," "men," "bodies," "persons" or whatever else- that they are capable of survival through dire transformations indeed, rather as some lowly animals might be capable of surviving as minute nuclei temporarily deprived of the much greater quantity of surrounding protoplasm that previously helped to compose them. The realist need not assert that it would be correct to say this. He may regard the issue as open or even as irremediably borderline. All that is necessary for his case is that the issue is best of course- about the continuity of an understood as a question- hypothetical, individual thing. What answer we give to this question is quite independent of what we may say about the concepts man, body, person and so on. In order to believe that there would be continuity, it is quite unnecessary to hold that the brain in the surgeon's hands would rightly be called a "body," a "man" or a "person." To see this we need only remember that it is unnecessary to call moths "caterpillars" or caterpillars "moths" in order to recognize that a moth is the same individual as a previously identified caterpillar. It may be that our sortal concepts reflect our beliefs about continuity, but our beliefs about continuity need not reflect our sortal concepts. (vii) If a single thread of wool, measuring one hundred yards from end to end, is knitted into a sweater measuring two feet from shoulder to waistband, and if the sweater and the piece of wool are one and the same thing, how long is that thing? Nothing, it seems, can be both one hundred yards long and yet only two feet long. Moreover, it is simply false to say, in ordinary language, either that the sweater is one hundred yards long or that the woollen thread is two feet I have admitted that a rejection of the broad principle of the long.25 substitutivity of identicals is immediately incoherent. Must I not therefore admit that the sweater and the woollen thread are two different physical objects, not one? First, the concept of numerical identity can be approached not only through the principle of substitutivity but through the notion of number itself. For the present I shall only draw attention to a certain kind of error in counting, namely that of counting the same thing twice. Even if it were accepted that counting objects always presupposes some sortal, it would surely be clear that the class of objects to be counted could be designated by two sortals rather than one. Thus we may count members of the single class of the tables and chairs in a certain room, or all the bureaux and chests of drawers. There is a piece of furniture called a chair-table, the back or top of which is hinged. If only tables are being counted, a chair-table would very properly be counted; and so too if
25
No doubt a fact related to the point of footnote
23, above.
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only chairs are being counted. But if chairs and tables are to be counted, while a chair-table might be included with even less hesitation, it should, of course, count for only one. For it is one and the same object that is both a chair and a table. Now the same goes for garments and hanks of wool. There is nothing all the garments together unintelligible in the order to count, indiscriminately, with all the hanks of wool over twenty feet long in a room: if anything is a garment or such a woollen thread, it is to be counted. Yet only a philosopher tenacious of a theory would proceed to count a sweater and the woollen thread of which it is constituted as two items. For we know very well what it is to count the same thing twice. Thus to distinguish, in this case, between the "is" of identity and the "is" of constitution seems to drive a wedge between numerical identity and number, which may be just as bad as a denial of substitutivity. The argument that the sweater and the piece of wool are different lengths, and so must be distinct, is not as damaging as it may seem if only because it would prove too much. If a piece of wool temporarily forms a loop or coil, or a worm wriggles itself into a mat, then the loop of wool or the worm-mat has dimensions that it would be misleading to attribute to the piece of wool or the worm except qua loop or qua mat. Thus, in our case of the sweater, there is something which is both a woollen thread and a sweater, and which qua thread is one hundred yards long and qua sweater, two feet long. A sweater is a physical object, but so is a loop of wool. If the former is unravelled into a single length of wool, there is no more reason for saying that a physical object has ceased to exist than if the latter is made straight. If it is insisted that surely a sweater has ceased to exist, for after all there was a sweater and it is no longer the case that there is a sweater, the unanswerable retort is that this logic can be exactly paralleled in the case of the loop of wool, so that we could be forced to admit that an individual ceases to exist at every moment that another individual changes its posture or, indeed, gains or loses any property at all. Such a multiplication of entities is neither necessary nor useful. The more important issue that arises in this and previous examples could be expressed in the abstract question whether the same matter could be or unified by more subject to more than one principle of unity simultaneously, than one "form." It is tempting to think that the present example is an illustration of just such a possibility, since a sweater can be regarded as a unity of whether it consists of one or more pieces of wool. Thus it independently might be thought that in unravelling the sweater we remove or destroy one principle of unity and by cutting the thread we remove a second. Each operation is possible without the other, and s6 each principle of unity seems independent of the other. The better and more realistic view, however, is that if a sweater consists of a single thread, then this means only that the different parts of the wool hang together in more than one way, and so have a unity that is more difficult to destroy than otherwise would be the case. Roughly, the unity or structure of a sweater knitted from a hundred separate threads is destroyed by
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unravelling, the unity of a single thread by cutting; while the unity of a sweater knitted from a single thread survives either operation but not both. Thus no serious doubt is cast on that apparently essential ingredient of a realist theory of the identity of physical objects, the principle that the same matter cannot be subject to more than one principle of unity at the same time: i.e., cannot compose more than one individual simultaneously. Complications and Implications The objections considered so far can, I think, be met without questioning or modifying the simple lines of my "realist" approach. The objections that I shall now consider can also, I believe, be answered, but may stimulate rather more self-searching. My suggestions are intended as exploratory, rather than as definitive answers to difficult and complex problems. (i) The planks of a ship are gradually replaced, one by one, until none of the originals remain. The old planks are preserved, and finally reconstituted as a ship. Which of the two ships is the original ship? Two problems about continuity are involved in this traditional riddle. Can a thing survive such radical repair, and is a reconstituted thing the same as the original? One of the more interesting and extravagant conceptualist explanations runs as follows. What we should say depends on the concept we use. If by ship we mean something that can survive repairs but cannot survive dismemberment, and by ship^ we mean something that, like a tent, can survive dismantling, then we can agree that there are two perfectly good continuities but no paradox. For there are two continuant things of equal status, a ship and a shipj, originally occupying the same place (and matter) but coming to occupy different places. The realist, on the other hand, might start with the question whether there is a unified material whole that survives continuously. First, the grammatical status of the word "tent" does not ensure that every tent is as much one thing as is a stone: the average tent is at best a carefully constructed heap of wood and canvas, and at its worst a functionally related set of items half of which have been left at home. It can at least be argued, then, that the "reconstituted" ship is not really the same individual thing as the original. What about the "repaired" ship? Here too the realist may pause, perhaps even over its synchronic unity, a matter of pegs and nails, but at least over its continuity. The case is not after all very much like the metabolism of an animal. The replacement is at a grosser level, the parts remain clearly defined and are in themselves unchanged by incorporation in the whole, and the agency is external. But whatever his conclusion (and it is again important to note that this conclusion may be that the case is a borderline case of substantial continuity) my realist's position is not obviously at risk. His claim is that the question whether there is continuity of a genuine whole or thing makes sense as it stands, and does not and cannot arise as the question whether the concept ship or some other concept allows for this or that eventuality.
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Yet such an approach seems to leave too much room for counter attack. There is, it must surely be admitted, something exaggerated in the suggestion that a man who takes a chair to pieces and then puts it together again has made a new and different thing or whole- although the same difficulty faces one who says that he has made a new chair. A related question concerns the notion of a category. I have talked of a class of identity statements involving the category of substance or thing, and I tried to explicate, although not, of course, to define, the concept of a thing by means of such expressions as "structure" and "natural unity." Yet a tent, a family and a stamp collection, which may seem to be substances, i.e. possible subjects or terms of this class of identity statements, are not obviously "structures" or "natural unities" in the required sense. How should such difficulties be met? A possible line of response would be to allow that when we stray into the realm of functional terms or others that so obviously reflect human interests or we may find ourselves conferring conventional or conventions, continuities, continuities "for all practical purposes," just as we can confer an other than natural unity on what is not really one thing. For all practical and aesthetic purposes, the monolithic temples of Abu Simbel were not destroyed when they were moved piecemeal, but preserved. A sculpture generally is one thing, but it can also be five bits of bronze on the lawn with a unity only in the eye of the beholder or the intention of the sculptor. There is nothing wrong with talking, in these cases, of continuity or unity. There is equally nothing wrong, in the quite different case of a truly conventional, purely onomastic distinction, in saying that the Missouri and the lower Mississippi, or the Cam and the Granta, are "different rivers." But the realist may reasonably claim that it is a quite unjustified leap to argue from such usages to the conclusion that all unity and all continuity is arbitrary or relative to human concepts. If there were no natural objects there would be no conventional objects either. Such a response preserves the essential metaphysics of realism, but at the expense of allowing apparently very much like the something conceptualist logic. That is to say, it becomes possible to argue that unless we know how an identity statement is to be understood, i.e. whether it is concerned with the continuity of a natural object as such or, on the other hand, with a conventional continuity from some specifically human point of view, we cannot determine the import and truth-conditions of the statement. This concession looks a good deal less portentous than the full-blown theory that identity or identification is always relative to such sortal concepts as man, rock, ship and so because it apparently leads to the same on, but it still seems objectionable paradoxes as that theory: whether such a paradox as that the temple was identical for a time with the monolith, the destruction of which it survived; or as the alternative paradox that the temple was at no time identical with the monolith with which for a time it shared all matter in common. line of thought, Another starts with the reflection that however,
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difficulties such as those over temporary disintegration can at least be imagined to occur as a result of some natural process. If a biological individual came to pieces before our eyes, and the pieces then organically recombined, it would be plausible to argue that we have the same individual, which existed for a time in pieces. Thus the consideration that it happens to concern an artifact, or that "ship" is a functional term, is not after all the source, or only source, of the famous riddle, and so cannot be relied on for its solution. It is important too that not any disintegration can be survived. Had the original Portland Vase been ground to fine powder from which a vase of the same structure was then Rational* fabricated, there should, I think, be no hesitation in denying'identity. doubt seems to arise when it can be thought that the fragments preserve the "form" of the vase: so that the vase still exists, although in pieces. The preservation of the form can be regarded as a matter of causality rather than Human agency may or something relative to human interests or conventions. may not be involved, but even if it is, the question can arise as to how much the unified structure or form of the original object has directly contributed to that of the reconstructed object. In the case of the vase ground to powder, the answer is, hardly at all. Thus a realist could allow, as a solution to the riddle of the temple, that both temple and monolith survive as one although rebuilt, no longer a monolith and, for that matter, more of a tourist attraction than a temple. (ii) The identity of packs of cards, families, troops, stamp collections, flocks, crowds and, perhaps, bundles and heaps (of bricks, if not of tar) is a These concepts are what Locke calls separate topic of some importance. are different substances from ideas of substances." Collective "collective individual substances, despite the fact that they occupy space and have a certain blood unity bestowed by a variety of principles, some natural, some conventionala common owner, a shared history, a joint use, even bare relationship, contiguity. As a physical object can survive the replacement of its parts, so a group continuity is possible as something partly independent of the continuity of its members. Yet groups are not individuals, for every group is essentially composed of individuals as members or units. From this point of view a swarm of bees is more like the set of bees than it is like a bee. that groups differ in the proposition Perhaps the chief difficulty categorially from things derives from the possibility that a group should either compose or be composed of a single individual. It might then seem to be that individual, as occupying the same space and having all parts in common with it. If Jones is the only living member of the Jones family, then where Jones stands, his family stands. Yet when he marries and has children, he no longer composes the Jones family, which may survive him as it existed before him. The notion of temporary identity is an absurdity: should we then hold that two distinct, concrete individual things stand in the same place at the same time? For if Jones alone constitutes his family, how can the latter be any less a concrete object than he is?
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The answer must, I think, be that the family composed of Jones is no more a thing in the categorial sense than is the family composed of a hundred far-flung members. We might even deny, not unreasonably, that one man can make a family, one brick, a heap of bricks, or one stamp, a stamp collection. Blood relationship unites a family, but it cannot unite Jones. To be a member is to be a part, and it is at least plausible that nothing can be a part of something else no larger than itself. But this denial is unnecessary, since members are a peculiar sort of parts, in that they are logically atomic parts or units. Jones' finger is a part of Jones, but it is not a part of the Jones family. Removing it makes Jones smaller, but does not make his family smaller. This unparadoxical ot the transitivity of the part-whole relationship counterexample yields something of the special character of the category of "collective substance." It also demonstrates that, whether or not Jones can by himself constitute the Jones family, he and his family never have parts in common, and so are never identical. Groups are made up of their members, but are not made of them. The case in which a group composes, rather than is composed of, an individual is very different. The logical difference between a family and a man is evident partly because the principle of unity is of an evidently different kind, historical or social rather than structural. But, as we have already seen, it is possible for what is prima facie a "collective substance" to be conceived of as having precisely the same principle of unity as an individual substance: for example the united mass of molecules that constitutes a horse. Not surprisingly, only in such a case can a collective substance be identical with an individual substance, and then it virtually ceases to be, logically speaking, a mere collection or group. It is conceived of as having parts smaller than its members, so that not only is every part of the mass of molecules a part of the horse, but every part of the horse is a part of the mass of molecules. It is thus questionable whether "mass" here functions as a true collective noun. The size of a mass, so conceived, is its extent, not the number of molecules in it; whereas to say that one herd of horses is larger or smaller than another is normally to make a numerical comparison. It is true that we might naturally describe a swarm of bees as getting larger without knowing or caring whether this is because the bees are getting bigger, farther apart or more numerous. A swarm of bees is fairly thing-like in its appearance. But from the premise that a swarm can excusably be mistaken for a single thing, it does not follow that it is excusable to mistake the concept swarm for a thing-concept. We call a "swarm" only what we recognize as a mere group of individuals, having a numerical magnitude. A true group can no more be identical with an individual than many things can be identical with one thing. Just as we can identify an individual without knowing what sort of thing it is, so we can in principle identify a group of individuals without knowing precisely how they are related. Just as we can recognize a unified object without being able to explain the source of its unity, so we can sometimes reasonably ascribe coherence to a group of objects without understanding the nature of its coherence, or even the nature of its members. Collective sortals such as crowd,
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flock, constellation, troop or pack are more definite in one or both of these respects. Others, such as pair, quire and (perhaps) cricket team, convey the numerical magnitude of the group. Hence "This pair of shoes is larger than that" cannot mean "numerically larger," and in fact means no more than that these shoes, which make up a pair, are larger than those, which do the same.
Counting Physical Objects
The contention that physical objects can be counted as such, i.e., without explicit or presupposed sortals, is in need of defense if only because it contradicts what is commonly taken to be evident from a few simple illustrations. These examples generally derive from Frege, although the favoured interpretation of them is by no means essential to Frege's own programme, which is to prove that numbers are not physical properties, but rather "objects" that "belong" to "concepts." His destructive aim is fully achieved not only by his illustrations, but even by his reflection that if number were essentially a physical or phenomenal property then only the physical or phenomenal could be counted. At the same time, whatever the strength or weakness of his positive account of number, the claim that physical objects can be counted as such can be rephrased in terms of his theory, as the claim that such a concept as "physical object in this box" can have a finite number. It may be that Frege commits himself to the proposition that the "decision" to regard things through the medium of any particular concept is "arbitrary" or at best "natural," and it seems that he would extend such an attitude towards the concept of a physical object or individual substance. But that mistake, as I think it, is another matter. It is perhaps not often that the specific claim about the counting of physical objects is distinguished from a wider claim about counting objects of thought in general. This is as we might expect when the significance of the distinction between sortal and categorial concepts is overlooked. But- the following passage may seem unequivocal:
If I give someone a stone with the words: Find the weight of this, I have given him precisely the object he is to investigate. But if I place a pile of playing cards in his hands with the words: Find the Number of these, this does not tell him whether I wish to know the number of cards, or of complete packs of cards, or even say of honour cards at skat. To have given him the pile in his hands is not yet to have given him completely the object he is to investigate; I must add some further word-cards, or packs, or honours.26
It is only necessary, however, to recognize as we have the insubstantial nature of groups 7 in order to see that the argument is overstretched when it is
26 Op. cit, p. 28.
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suggested that a man cannot simply count the objects that he has been given. It is significant that the judgment that these 104 objects constitute two packs of cards must be based on knowledge of card-games and the conventions for the of packs, whereas the judgment that there are 104 objects is composition independent of any such knowledge. It would doubtless be natural enough for one quite ignorant of cards to conclude from their appearance that they are all objects of the same sort, yet in the case of chess-pieces, for example, one might fail to draw even this conclusion, without detriment to the possibility of counting them. Thus such examples prove nothing to our point. It may be that "I can say with equal truth both It is a copse' and 'It is five trees', or both 'Here are four companies' and 'Here are 5000 men'."28 But the individual substances, trees and men, are here merely paired with collective substances, from which the concept of an individual substance would itself provide sufficient distinction. As for the question whether just the honour cards are to be counted, it would arise no more than the question whether just the honour cards are to be weighed. In any case, it would be no less successfully answered by the word "object" or "thing" than by the word "card." Frege associates his arguments with a reasonable theoretical point about counting: every number coherently arrived at must possess a definite "unit." We must know what we are counting. But this does not justify his approval of Spinoza:
We only think of things in terms of number after they have first been reduced common genus. For example, a man who holds in his hand a sesterce and a dollar not think of the number two unless he can cover his sesterce and his dollar with and the same name, viz., piece of silver, or coin; then he can affirm that he has 9 pieces of silver, or two coins. to a will one two
Now this example lacks all plausibility, except what it can borrow from the general principle that it is wrongly supposed to illustrate. For it is obviously possible to count the objects in a man's hand without knowing that they are all silver or all coins. This is because a physical object is, as such, a satisfactory unit. There is a certain unclarity in Frege's account of units. His approval of Spinoza and talk of "generic concepts" suggests simply a belief in the need for a sortal to constitute the unit. Elsewhere, however, he seems to assume that his own theory that number belongs to concepts is just a way of expressing or allowing for the necessity of a unit. Yet if we count the coins in a box, the Fregean "concept" to which the resultant number "belongs" is not coin, but
27 Frege criticizes Mill for believing that "two and one pair are the same thing" (ibid., p. 33) but fails to grasp that the notion of a pair of boots is at least parasitic on that of a number of boots, i.e., is a group concept. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid., p. 62.
28 29
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something like coin in this box. It is possible, however, to regard coin as the "unit,'1 while taking in this box to limit the scope of the operation. The difference between counting the coins in one box and counting the coins in two would be regarded as a difference not in unit, i.e. in the kind of objects counted, but in scope. Since Frege's "concept" includes both unit (in this sense) and from any associated argument scope, his argument is to be distinguished concerned only with the alleged necessity of a sortal or generic concept. I mention this point in view of the argument that the task of counting physical objects is impossible and absurd because an attempt to count all physical objects wouid immediately be beset with countless doubtful cases of widely different kinds. Now it may indeed be absurd to hold that there is a definite number of physical objects in existence, but the adequacy of physical object as a unit is demonstrated by the bare possibility of counting physical If a this were not so, no unit would be adequate, within restricted field. objects since the very same difficulty can in principle arise with any sortal. There is a variety of simple and compound eyes, as well as the possibility of doubtfully primitive .or vestigial cases, so that the operation of counting all the eyes in existence, apart from being splendidly pointless and impracticable, could end in a determinate conclusion only by such rough treatment of delicate issues as to be worthless. The number of eyes even of a single fly may most reasonably be given as ten simple and two compound. But these natural obstacles do not prove that eyes cannot be counted as such. Those who dislike categorial concepts sometimes joke fun at a concept that could give rise to such "unanswerable" questions as whether a fine gold chain is one "physical object" or many. Yet this same dilemma, if indeed it is survive the application of the sprtal "piece of gold." one, would obstinately Even the question "Is a hazel-nut one object or two?" has been offered as a triumphant refutation of any such position as I defend. Yet the only plausible of the power to produce these "borderline" examples is the explanation possession of the concept of an object. It is in any case easy to think of the objects in a box would be a more in which counting situations straightforward task than counting, say, the flowers in a box, not only for those less than competent at recognizing flowers, but also when some of the objects are doubtful or composite flowers. We have seen that examples involving groups may misleadingly suggest that every individual thing is a part of indefinitely many greater individual things. On the other hand, it may also be argued that every individual is made up of indefinitely many lesser individuals. If any cubic centimetre of the flesh of my body is a physical individual or object, then so is any cubic millimetre, and so on If I am thus composed of indefinitely down or up the scale of measurement. many parts, each of which is a physical object, then how could physical objects possibly be counted as such? Men can be counted, it might be argued, simply because the indefinitely many parts of a man are necessarily not themselves men.
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The answer to this sophism is to discrete object or whole that is concept occurs in the intelligible discrete whole, whereas a hand or so. It is in relation to this general possible. Frege distinguishes between those that can determine a unit:
We can, for example, in a variety of ways, "red". To a concept which isolates what any arbitrary division
point to the possibility of the concept of a clearly not sortal-relative. Precisely such a and true judgment that a man is always a cubic centimetre of flesh is only occasionally concept of a discrete thing that counting is two sorts of concept, those that cannot and
divide up something falling under the concept "red" into parts without the parts thereby ceasing to fall under the same concept of this kind no finite number will belong .... Only a concept falls under it in a definite manner, and which does not permit of it into parts, can be a unit relative to a finite Number.30
Thus we could express the question of the last paragraph by asking whether there could be a general concept of an individual physical object or substance that is a concept of Frege's second kind. The possibility of counting all the red things in a room makes the answer clear, since this possibility is evidently not to be explained by the concept red. If it is insisted that an arbitrarily selected cubic centimetre of flesh (which may overlap, more or less, indefinitely many others) is indeed a physical between individual or thing, then we must draw a categorical distinction and uncountable countable and arbitrary physical "things" non-arbitrary, physical things. There is in fact a parallel distinction between uncountable and countable parts. As we have seen, a thing can be conceived of as having indefinitely many parts, because of indefinitely many possible lines of division. Yet it may also be tholight of as having a definite number of parts, as a chair may be composed of seventeen pieces of wood. This notion of numerable parts, of course, is not merely like, but is actually derivative from the notion of numerable objects. Yet paradoxically the possibility of such numerable parts may itself be thought to cast doubt on the possibility of definitely numerable objects: should the chair count for one or for seventeen? But we have seen that a very similar doubt can arise over counting flowers or eyes. One principle applies to both cases: it would be wrong to count the composite whole as well as the parts. Beyond that, which course to take will depend on the facts of each case: i.e. the character, and degree, of the unity of the whole. There is yet another notion of a part, which is of some immediate relevance. For there are parts that are not purely arbitrarily determined and yet have no claims to be discrete individuals. These parts (unlike "cubic centimetres of flesh") are numerable under their specific concepts but are not numerable as parts. Such parts are the parts of the body, hands, fingers, finger-nails and so on,
30 ibid., p. 66.
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there being a definite number of each of these (except in odd cases) but no definite number of parts of the body. The sortalist theory can be fairly characterized as taking the individuation of whole, discrete objects to be no different in principle from the individuation of such parts as these. Hence it is often difficult to dissociate the theory from extreme metaphysical monism, or from a picture of the world as an organic whole. Yet the assimilation is obviously unjustified and seemingly mistaken. The impossibility of counting such arbitrary parts as "cubic centimetres of flesh" may be disguised by the fact that the question "How many cubic centimetres of flesh are there in my body?1' can admit of a definite answer. But this is a case, not of counting parts, but of measurement. To regard the North Sea as 10,000 square miles in extent is not to think of it as composed of 10,000 parts or items. Units of measurement are not units of sea, as we can understand from the absurdity of asking where the lines of division actually lie between the 10,000 square miles. Size itself may seem a problem to some who will argue that, when told to count the objects in a box, we cannot know whether to count every minute speck of dust or particle of grease. Once again the argument proves too much: in counting th^ animals in a pen, such difficulties do not arise over microscopic animals. We are seldom interested in the latter in ordinary life, but thi$ is not to say that there is not a definite number of them, if we pass over viruses, embryos, white blood corpuscles and other odd or borderline, and so irrelevant cases. Finally, we should evaluate the argument sometimes advanced on the basis of considerations drawn from physics, that no object is "really" or absolutely or utterly discrete; and that therefore the concept of physical discreteness, and so the concept of a physical object, finds application only from a human point of perhaps, of our perceptual limitations. This leads to a view, in consequence, limited conceptualism structurally similar to the theory of Locke. Now the and status of quantum physics is, of course, a controversial interpretation I think that it could even be granted that nothing is, in a certain but matter, sense, "absolutely" discrete, without concluding that the boundaries of physical objects are less than objective or "absolute" in a different sense. That is to say, there is no reason for the conclusion that the objects of biology, for example, than the objects of physics. The distinction between a are more mind-dependent goat and his environment, and the life-history of an individual goat, are not is, as the more negligible sub specie aeternitatis- unless every distinction would have it. Frege rightly impresses on us the thorough-going conceptualist difference between the discrete unity of physical objects and the numerical or logical unity that is on the same level as duality. But he wrongly regards the relationship between these concepts as purely psychological:
The more the internal contrasts within a thing fade into insignificance by comparison with the contrasts between it and its environment, the more natural it becomes for us to regard it as a distinct object. For a thing to be "united" means that it has a
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property which causes us, when we think of it, to sever it from its environment consider it on its own.31 and
This is to lean much further towards conceptual ism than any consideration of the nature of number can justify. For physical unity provides an objective basis for the individuation and so the counting of physical things such as no analogous property can provide, e.g., for events-if "property" is the right word. We cannot accept that an object on one side of a wall is physically discrete from an object on the other and at the same time hold that they are parts of the same object. A contrast may be drawn with the logical separation of events, which is not similarly a function of physical separation. The lines of demarcation between events will indeed depend on our way of looking at things. An event or series of events-an a holiday, a cricket match, or any "causal chain"-is explosion, regarded as logically discrete or as unified only in relation to interests that may very well differ from person to person. But the degree to which Frege's psychological explanation fits the individuation of events is no ground for the conclusion that he accounts for the individuation of things. Conclusion I have argued that sortal concepts do not fulfil the role in our thought usually attributed to them with respect to the identity and individuation of physical objects. I have tried to make intelligible and convincing the claim that this role is adequately fulfilled by the categorial concept of a complex, unified individual substance, i.e., the notion of a physical object. These claims, if correct, may have a significance at two different levels: first, at the more abstract level of the problem* of the nature and status of categorial logic, and secondly at the level of specific philosophical problems involving identity, such as, outstandingly, the problem of personal identity. I have^so far ducked the former sort of question, and should perhaps be wise if I continued to do so. On the other hand, it may help to clarify the issues if I indicate briefly my own feelings about these obscure if fundamental problems. First, then, consider the hostile suggestion that my arguments demonstrate at most the existence of a general concept of a physical object as an important ingredient in "our conceptual scheme." Since its presence there, so the criticism may continue, is to be explained and justified in the same way as that of any other, concept, i.e., pragmatically, such a conclusion is of little wider significance. Hence the characterization of my position as "realist" is unjustified and misleading. the potential in my view, greatly underestimates Such a reaction, significance of the difference between categorial and sortal concepts. The latter
31 /bid., p. 42.
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are evidently in principle individually dispensable, since they are involved with scientific or common-sense theory about contingent features of the world. On the other hand the categorial concepts of an individual thing and of stuff, both of which have tended traditionally to fall under the aegis of "substance/* are intimately bound up with the abstract notion of causality, with the causal notions of structure, nature and essence, and with the view of events as the operations of substances or as interactions between substances- a view which some philosophers of science may claim can be discarded, but which is as arguably integral to any account of the world of which we can make sense. Categorial logic is concerned with this kind of abstract relationship. Now the history of philosophy demonstrates that it is not impossible to adopt a "realist" approach to such fundamental and apparently ineluctable categories as space and time, causality and natural law, or as substance itself. For by and large philosophers did so before Kant gave his influential answer to the question "How is a synthetic a priori possible?" here. Nobody could endorse The term "realist" needs explanation of reason or the said about ideas rationalist that every pre-Kantian everything status and content of the principles of reason. Indeed the point of my own argument, which attributes some sort of primacy to the notion of an individual thing with objectively determinable limits, does not reflect at all closely any tendency among post-Cartesian rationalists. Yet, in general, rationalism before Kant made assumptions deserving attention: it was assumed that principles of reason (e.g., that whatever exists substantially has place, or is subject to law, or that whatever happens is in virtue of the nature or essence of some substance or substances) might constitute necessary presuppositions of any attempt to make sense of any possible universe; and yet at the same time that spatial, temporal and causal relationships, for example, have straightforwardly independent and This reasonable objective reality as aspects of "things in themselves." assumption, like the belief in the very possibility of such universal principles, has never to my mind been refuted. Yet today both would commonly be rejected, generally on the basis of more or less crude verificationist arguments and a narrow conception of a priori truth as "linguistic"- if, indeed, argument against rationalism is thought necessary. Yet modern pragmatism, which depends for its on the concept of utility and all that that concept content explanatory seems by comparison with rationalism a doctrine of self-refuting presupposes, incoherence. Now to descend from the heights of this most abstract question in The bare appreciation that there exists at the categorial level a philosophy, and conceptual relationships constitutive of what it is to be an rules of system individual substance as opposed, say, to an event or process, a system which cannot be flouted without producing, if not nonsense, at least a change in the whole character of what is being said, can lend an edge to criticisms of the that often pervades the treatment of untroubled pragmatism or conventionalism
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narrower topics in the area of identity. Personal identity is a striking example of such a topic. Persons are individual substances. That is, they fall within the only class of particulars for which the formal, categorial concept determines the "conditions of existence," i.e. the conditions that constitute coming into or going out of existence-or, indeed, the limits not only temporal but spatial. I have pointed to a contrast with the formal concept of an event or process. The latter will not define individuals because every event or process is part of some wider event or process. Roughly, in order to know which event has been ostensively identified by some speaker, the auditor must have some indication of the limits intended by the speaker, such as the context or the speaker's known interest or explicit affirmation may supply. Events do not have natural boundaries, spatial or the movement of the tides is part of a wider process, but there is no temporal: single, determinate answer to the question of which wider process. There are no natural, objective wholes and parts among events comparable with individual men and their limbs. An individual substance is also, as it were, a temporal whole. The technical concept of a stage is sometimes proposed as if it were an intelligible rival for the fundamental role that the concept of a physical object plays in our conceptual scheme. Yet, while it may possess the appearance of a capacity to determine conditions of existence, this, as we have seen, is because the spatial limits of a stage are simply borrowed from the natural boundaries of a thing, while the temporal limits are determined according to an arbitrary rule by the mere passage of time. It would thus be impossible for anyone to have the concept of a stage who did not already possess the concept of a physical object: the two concepts are distinct only because the former involves an artificial application of the notion of discontinuity where there is no real discontinuity. Thus a principle constitutive of the notion of an individual thing or substance is that different moments in a thing's existence must be spanned by a real continuity. Things, unlike events, cannot be temporally, any more than spatially gappy: they cannot cease and begin again later, and cannot be said to be still existing at some time, solely in virtue of some future manifestation suitably related to the past. Bland assurances that the unity of an interrupted series is sufficient for material and personal identity are, it seems to me, quite unfounded.32 At every moment at which a thing exists there is some place at which it exists, some space which it occupies. The belief that I might cease to exist at death and be restored to existence at the resurrection is incoherent, but it is also false that a person could properly be said to continue in existence after death solely in virtue of some future pattern of events at the resurrection. It
32 Cf. H. H. Price, Hume's Theory of the External op. cit.
World, pp. 45-48; and Penelhum,
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seems possible to contrast with this the assertion that a performance of Wagner's Ring, or the erosion of a cliff, is in progress, which may be true even when all the musicians are asleep or every particle of rock is at rest, and thus when there is no answer to the question, "Where is it actually taking place, at this moment?" The existence of a substance is always actual, never as it were dispositional.33 But if I am right, it is possible to go further, and to reject any theory of personal identity that treats persons as patterns or series of events, whether or not temporally continuous. For on such an account a person would become a particular with arbitrarily determined limits, a mode rather than an individual substance.34 Postscript: Dummetton Identity Since the above was written, Michael Dummett, in Frege: Philosophy of Language (London, 1973), has endorsed the broad approach which I attack. As his discussion introduces new considerations which clarify certain issues, some comment seems appropriate. First, Dummett draws two distinctions among the general nouns or "countable general concepts" with which a criterion of identity is associated. Some, like "horse" or "plant" (and opposed, e.g., to "tailor") "cannot cease to apply to any object to which they apply: i.e., the criterion of identity is such that they could not apply to some object at one time and not at another." A number of such "nonrcontingent" predicates (as Dummett does not call them) may share a criterion of identity, differing only in their criterion of application:
identity, there will always be one which is most general, i.e. which applies to all those objects ... for which that is the appropriate criterion of identity. It may require discussion to identify these most general terms: one might at first be uncertain, for example, whether or not the criterion for 'same person' was always the same as that for 'same animal', or, again, whether or not there exists a general criterion for 'same organism1 to which 'same animal' is subordinate (in the sense that 'is the same animal as' could be equated with 'is an animal and is the same organism as'). But that it must be possible to identify such most general terms, one for each criterion of identity that is employed, it seems impossible to doubt.
And among any such class of nouns, associatedwith the same criterionof
These "most general terms" are called by Dummett "categorial predicates," designating "categories of objects," while all other non-contingent predicates are called "sortal predicates," designating "sorts." Now my view is that concrete, discrete physical objects form a category in
33 Compare a point made against phenomenalism, e.g., by I. Berlin in "Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements," Mind (1950). 34 My thanks are due to all those who have commented on earlier drafts, and especially to Terence Penelhum to whom I owe some fundamental points.
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Dummett's sense, and share a very general criterion of identity. (Events, however, do not form a category in Dummett's sense.) Thus there is no problem as to how we should identify and describe a physical object without knowing its sort, or even whether it is animate or inanimate. Dummett, however, nearly everywhere simply assumes that the process of seeking the most general, categorial predicates will stop well before we reach a class of "physical object" (but cp. p. 582). Yet if he can envisage the possibility that perhaps dogs, insects, amoebas, bacteria, trees and lichens share a criterion of identity, I cannot see why he should reject out of hand the possibility that this criterion should extend to free-flying half-bricks, bottles, sea-shells, bones, pebbles and pieces of wood. A prejudice in favour of life or the community of animals seems poor support for a logical doctrine. Dummett appeals, as if to an agreed datum, to the principle that the corpse of a horse is not a horse and so cannot be identical with the horse we used to call Peter; yet we do talk of dead horses and a wish to be cremated is not a wish to be burnt alive. I believe that Dummett has given himself an insoluble problem as to how criteria of identity are themselves to be and counted. between distinguished Moreover, in correctly distinguishing sortal predicates, he offers us no contingent general nouns and non-contingent account of why we should have such a distinction or draw it where we do: after all, if death is taken to be the end of a horse, it would seem possible to decide that pupation should be deemed the end of a caterpillar (cf. Dummett's own just strictures against smooth, non-explanatory definitions in logic). The answer is, very roughly, that sortals are the terms by which we intend to classify physical objects according to the nature and origin of their unity, i.e., according to the natural principles of their existence as objects; and so of course a sortal, if it that object's life-history. Pace applies to an object, will apply throughout Dummett, reality is not an "amorphous lump" needing to be sliced up by our concepts; it actually does very largely come in chunks, which are by their nature of interest to us. Indeed, we are ourselves of their number. Secondly, Dummett adheres to a doctrine that the criterion of application of a sortal does not imply or involve the criterion of identity associated with the term, although both are involved in the sense of the term. Intuitively, or so I have presupposed in some of my arguments, "This is a man" normally picks out or identifies an object and says of it that it is a man. But Dummett denies that, in such statements, "This," accompanied by a demonstrative gesture, picks out an object at all, of any category; and argues as well that no criterion of identity attaches to the predicate. The argument relies heavily on the example of type/token ambiguity, which he ascribes to different criteria of identity when the criterion of application is the same. Such ambiguity, he believes, cannot arise in the statement "This is a book." We cannot intelligibly distinguish "This is a from "This is a (token-)book" because they could not differ in (type-)book" truth-value. Only when we raise questions involving a criterion of identity, as in "This is another book," can ambiguity arise. But if we cannot ask whether "This
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is a book" speaks of a type or a token, then "This" does not here pick out an object at all, for there can be no "object" indeterminate as to its being a type or a token. A number of considerations count against this argument. First, 'This is a to the clearly ambiguous 'This is an book" seems too closely connected admirable book" or "This is a book that should be in every library" (one sense of which would be rejected for absurdity) etc., not itself to be ambiguous. The claim that there could be no difference in truth-value between the two candidate senses may seem secure, but only because it is difficult to see how one could point through a particular object to a type, so to speak, unless the particular is a token of that type. A counter-example suggested to me by Mr. Milton Wachsberg is that of pointing to a piece of microfilm while saying 'This is a book," which could either be taken to speak of the type of which the microfilm, although not a book, is a sort of token; or it could be said that the microfilm is after all a book just because it is a token of a type-book. In neither case, however, could we reasonably conclude that the criterion of application does not involve a criterion of identity. Another case is that of gesturing towards a pile of copies of the same work and saying "This is a book": a difference arises at the level of truth, dependent upon different senses of "book," in that the speaker has failed to identify anything describable as a copy, but has identified something truly describable as a work. As it happens, "book" is a poor example for Dummett in so far as, e.g., a book of accounts is a book but is not a copy of a work. But an account-book is a type of book, for more than one type/token distinction seems capable of being It is tempting to think of correspondingly attached to the term "book." narrower and wider criteria of application (in one sense, an exercise-book is not a book), which is hardly a point in favour of Dummett. But in general it seems reasonable to assume that sortals, in their primitive use, apply to the individual (i.e. their use is intelligible only if we presuppose that we can identify physical objects); and that the type-use arises from the possibility of a more sophisticated system of classification, involving genera. of an for the existence used by Dummett, Another argument, indeterminacy of ostensive statements actually serves to strengthen my belief in the primitive possibility of picking out physical objects as such. "That is red" may be used in a context in which its truth-value is unaffected by whether that towards which the ostensive gesture is directed is a gleam of light or a pillar-box, a part of the surface of a many-coloured object or a reflection on the surface of a white object. In such a case, maybe, "That" functions rather like "There": Yet this not, i.e., to pick out an object of one category or another. indeterminacy may be ruled out, whether explicitly by, e.g., "That (physical) object . . ." or by the context, e.g. by some more definite gesture such as shaking or lifting a physical object: the change in purported reference will obviously be in "That is a capable of affecting truth-value. Certainly the demonstrative
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statue" always purports to pick out a physical object, even if, in the absence of any indicated physical object, we might say that what it succeeded in picking out was only a shadow or trick of the light. If we then prefer to say that it failed to pick out an object at all, its failure was not for want of trying.
February 1973
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Ayers - Individuals Without Sortals

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Canadian Journal of Philosophy

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume IV, Number 7, September 1974

MICHAEL R. AYERS, Wadham College, Oxford

1 David Wiggins, Identity and Spatio-Temporal

here nor elsewhere

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4 Wiggins, op. eft., p. 42.

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Problems and Paradoxes

7 Another is that the individual relevant lapse of time.

to have been an f throughout

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8 Cf. Geach, Reference and Generality

(Ithaca, N. Y., 1962), p. 157 and p. 10.

9 Further criticism of Geach appears in Perry, op. cit.

the piece of glass

the piece of glass

10 a. ibid., pp. 198t. 1 1 See footnote 4, above.

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17 "Hume on Personal Identity," below, on measurement. 18 Principles of Human Knowledge,,

Philosophical Part I, 12.

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No doubt a fact related to the point of footnote

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Counting Physical Objects

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32 Cf. H. H. Price, Hume's Theory of the External op. cit.

World, pp. 45-48; and Penelhum,

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