International Phenomenological Society

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Peter van Inwagen's Material Beings
Author(s): Eli Hirsch
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 687-691
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2108093
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Vol. LIII, No. 3, September 1993

Peter van Inwagen' s Material Beings

ELI HIRSCH

Brandeis University

I will confine myself to the central thesis of van Inwagen's book, what he
calls "the Denial." I have to ignore the many original and illuminating dis-

cussions of subsidiary issues found in the book (especially the issue of

vagueness). The Denial says that living organisms are the only composite

things that exist, so that there are no such things as cars, or apples, or mountains, or stones, or planets, or atoms.
I will try to reconstruct, and then to assess, what I take to be van Inwa-

gen's most fundamental argument for the Denial. An initially surprising feature of his book is that van Inwagen does not purport to offer any knockdown

argument for his seemingly incredible thesis. (On the modesty of van Inwagen's claims in behalf of his arguments, see, for example, pp. 66, 68, 115,
122, 266.) But this surprise is neutralized by a second one: van Inwagen does
not think that the Denial runs counter to common sense. This being so, he

apparently does not feel under any special obligation to present more than a
good case for the Denial. The case, as I reconstruct it, might be laid out in
the following extended argument- an argument for both the Denial's truth
and its compatibility with common sense. (I hope that what follows is some-

thing more than "thoughts that occurred to me while reading van Inwagen's
book.")

1. Our concept of existence cannot be metaphysically arbitrary.

I take this to be the most fundamental assumption lying behind van Inwa-

gen's thesis. Of course, what it means (and the formulation is mine, not van
Inwagen's) must be clarified. I will come back to this. Let me first lay out
the whole argument.

2. If we are guided by how people use the existential quantifier (and

the rest of the apparatus of quantification) in the ordinary business

of life, it will seem that our concept of existence is metaphysically arbitrary.

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3. Therefore there must be a strict, philosophical sense of the

quantifier, different from its use in the ordinary business of life,
which expresses the non-arbitrary concept of existence.

4. Certainly I exist in the strict sense, and I am a living organism.

5. If I exist in the strict sense, and I am a living organism, it would

be arbitrary to suppose that other kinds of living organisms do not
exist in the strict sense (and such arbitrariness is ruled out in 3).

6. Therefore many kinds of living organisms (presumably all of

those that we seem to be referring to in the ordinary business of
life) do exist in the strict sense.

7. To allow that any other composite things besides living organisms exist in the strict sense would make the concept of existence
in the strict sense arbitrary (and such arbitrariness is ruled out in
3).

8. Therefore the only composite things that exist in the strict sense
are living organisms.

Let us try to broach the fundamental premise 1-we may call this the
"non-arbitrariness principle"-by mentioning a few instances in which van

Inwagen in effect appeals to such a principle. One of his primary projects is

to answer the "Special Composition Question," viz. the question, "[I]n what
circumstances do things add up to or compose something?" (p. 31) To the
naively intuitive suggestion that things compose something so long as they

are sufficiently bonded together, van InWagen objects that two living organisms that are bonded (e.g., glued) together certainly do not compose a third

thing. But suppose someone tries to fall back on the suggestion that at least
if two things are not living organisms then if they are sufficiently bonded to-

gether they compose something. To this van Inwagen protests: "But what
could justify such discrimination?" (p. 69) I take that to be an instance of his
appealing in effect to the non-arbitrariness principle.

Here is another instance. A believer in the existence of ordinary artifacts

will presumably hold that a sculptor can bring a statue into existence out of
some clay. But, says van Inwagen: "Pick up a lump of clay and knead it into
some complicated and arbitrary shape. Call anything essentially of that shape

a gollyswoggle....I should think that if our sculptor brought a statue into existence, then you brought a gollyswoggle into existence" (p. 126). The point
here, I think, is that it would be metaphysically arbitrary to countenance stat-

ues but not gollyswoggles. Since we intuitively want to reject the existence

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of gollyswoggles, the non-arbitrariness principle forces us to reject the exis-

tence of statues (and, by an extension of the argument, all other artifacts).

I will suggest a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the non-arbi-

trariness principle being satisfied. Suppose that R is the relationship which

provides the answer to the Special Composition Question; that is, things add
up to something if and only if they are R-interrelated. Then the non-arbitrari-

ness principle requires that R be a natural relation. I use "natural relation" in

the sense of David Lewis; a relation is natural (to a high degree) if it is not
(to a high degree) merely disjunctive. It seems clear that R would have to be

(highly) disjunctive if we countenance statues but not gollyswoggles or if we

allow bonding to entail R except for living organisms. (For Lewis, indeed, a
relation is perfectly natural only if it is wholly internal, so that if R must be
perfectly natural, van Inwagen's Duplication Principle of p. 139 would im-

mediately follow.) That van Inwagen does in effect subscribe to the non-arbitrariness principle in the sense in which I am trying to explain this emerges

rather clearly on p. 267, where he rejects an answer to the Special Composition Question which would take the following form: "Things compose something if and only if they are either arranged chairwise, or arranged applewise,
or arranged planetwise, or,..." Van Inwagen does not object to such notions

as "arranged chairwise"; what he does object to is an answer to the Special

Composition Question which merely gives us a list-that is, a disjunctionof different cases.

Suppose that we accept premise 1 of the argument as just explained. Let

us see how the rest of the argument goes through. 2 says that, as quantifiers

are used in the ordinary business of life, the non-arbitrariness principle is violated. This seems right, as is shown by the fact that we ordinarily quantify
over statues but not gollywoggles, aid other similar examples. 3 concludes
that, for metaphysical purposes, rather than practical ones, we need a strict

sense of the quantifier which does satisfy the non-arbitrariness principle. Let
us pass over 4 (that I, a certain living organism, exist in the strict sense);

though there are a number of important questions that might be raised about

4 many philosophers will find this premise intuitively acceptable. (An especially important question about 4 is the issue of "four dimensionalism" men-

tioned in footnote 28, which threatens to block the rest of the argument.) As

for the rest of the argument, 5-8, I would put it like this. The property of being a living organism is the most general natural property I have; or, at least,
it is the most general natural property I have which seems capable of figuring
in an answer to the Special Composition Question. Hence, to countenance
things in addition to living organisms would require an answer in the form of
a list, a disjunction, of different natural properties. This would violate the

non-arbitrariness principle. On the other hand, to countenance only certain

kinds of living organisms (e.g., humans) would restrict existence beyond the

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requirements of the non-arbitrariness principle (which would itself be a kind

of arbitrariness). So I must countenance all and only living organisms.
I cannot accept this argument though I think it may have at some level a
certain degree of force. My own belief is this: The concept of existence we
employ in the ordinary business of life is the only concept of existence we
have ("the ordinary business of life" is van Inwagen's expression). This con-

cept does indeed seem to be metaphysically arbitrary in the sense explained.

And this is in a way a perplexing and disturbing fact. But we have no other
"strict" or "philosophical" concept of existence to fall back on. Possibly we
can alter our language and concepts but that is not the issue. Given what we
actually mean by "exists"-given the use we actually make of the
quantifier-metaphysical arbitrariness in the sense explained seems to be
what we are stuck with.

Note how, in my reconstructed argument, the so-called "strict" sense of

the quantifier falls out in 3 as a conclusion of the demand imposed by the

non-arbitrariness principle, a demand that is not met by the quantifier's use in

the ordinary business of life. I think that this is the way it really works for
van Inwagen. Notably absent in his discussion is any serious question as to

whether we have a concept of existence beyond the one employed in the ordinary business of life (which business, by the way, includes "writing an

anatomy text" [p. 173], and, I suppose, any other scientific treatise). I think
van Inwagen tacitly assumes that we must have such a concept because of the
demand imposed by the non-arbitrariness principle. I do appreciate the force of

this demand but I think there is no way to satisfy it. To put the point
bluntly, it seems to me that I simply have no idea of what van Inwagen
means when he says such things as, "There are trees but there are no apples

(though it would of course be correct to say in the ordinary business of life

that there are a lot of apples around here)." It seems to me that I don't grasp
the sense of his words "There are no apples."

Van Inwagen offers the interesting example of people who misidentify a

certain configuration of animals as an animal, which they call a "bliger." He

suggests that though there are no bligers, people in that situation need not be

expressing a false proposition when they say such things as, "There is a
bliger crossing the field." Van Inwagen then asserts: "What I mean by saying
that there are no chairs is precisely analogous to what I mean by saying that

there are no bligers (p. 104)." But the cases are not analogous. In the imagined example people used the word "bliger" (at least originally) because they
were making a mistake about something, a mistake which they would natu-

rally-that is, in "the ordinary business of life"-express by saying, "Oh, so

there really (strictly) are no (such things as) bligers." In this example, the distinction between "strict" and "loose" talk takes place within "the ordinary
business of life." That is why we are able to understand the distinction. But
people who say, "There are a lot of apples around here" are (as van Inwagen
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would apparently agree) not making any mistake, certainly no mistake which
they could naturally express by saying, "Oh, so there really (strictly) are no

apples." What van Inwagen means by the latter sentence remains mystifying
to me.

It must be understood that when van Inwagen says, "Things that are arranged applewise do not compose anything" or, as he sometimes likes to put
it, "There is nothing there (besides the applewise arranged things"), he is not

making the point that the properties of apples are supervenient upon the
properties of their parts. For he would say that even about trees; he thinks
that any composite is supervenient upon its parts (see p. 90). He should
agree, therefore, that in one important and obvious sense a tree is nothing
over and above its parts. Still he wants to say that ("strictly speaking") trees
exist but apples do not. I do not understand what this means.
I can think of one way to interpret what van Inwagen is really doing,

though he will surely not welcome this interpretation. Imagine that he set
himself the task of constructing a language as close to English as possible
except that it satisfies the non-arbitrariness principle. (Perhaps he also would
like the language to circumvent certain familiar puzzles and paradoxes but I

think that that motivation is secondary for van Inwagen; see p. 266.) The ar-

gument I went through earlier may indicate that the best or simplest way to
achieve this result is by restricting the quantifier in the language so that
(within the domain of composite material beings) it ranges only over living
organism. In this language, "There are no apples" is equivalent to "Apples are
not living organisms." If we spoke this language we would utter the same

sentences van Inwagen does in his philosophy. Perhaps, then, the real interest
of the Denial is to show us what a language might look like which satisfies
the specified constraints.

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