The Atlas of Reality

by Robert C. Koons,Timothy Pickavance

  22.5 Fundamental Artifacts

  Suppose that we have decided to embrace Anti-Heapism. This leaves us with the following possible fundamental entities: metaphysical atoms, artifacts, living organisms, and functional parts of artifacts and living organisms. In this section, we will turn our attention to the existence of artifacts and their functional parts.

  The issue at hand concerns the existence of material artifacts. We are not concerned here with immaterial ones, like theorems, works of fiction or musical compositions. We are also not concerned with artifacts that are identical to living organisms. If a bonsai tree counts as both an organism and an artifact, it is not a mere artifact. We are concerned here with material mere artifacts.

  22.5T Fundamental Artifactualism. Some material mere artifacts exist fundamentally.

  22.5A Anti-Artifactualism. No fundamental material mere artifacts exist.

  There are few, if any reasons, to suppose artifacts to be fundamental entities. Let's consider some of the reasons to deny them this status.

  22.5.1 Arguments against fundamental artifacts

  We consider two metaphysical objections to Fundamental Artifactualism. There is an appeal, first, to the intrinsicality of existence, and, second, to the arbitrariness of the persistence conditions of artifacts. The second objection is taken up in Chapter 25.

  In addition to these two objections, two of the arguments against heaps also apply to artifacts. First of all, Ockham's Razor (PMeth 1) favors a theory without artifacts. Second, it does not seem plausible to suppose that artifacts have emergent active powers. The whole point of building artifacts from certain pre-existing materials is based on our confidence that the resulting artifact won't have any emergent powers, that what it will do or not do can be predicted confidently on the basis of the powers of its non-artificial parts. Hence, an appeal to Redundancy for Composite Entities (PMeth 4) gives us a good reason not to believe in artifacts as fundamental entities.

  The argument from the Priority of Spatial Point-Parts is not as strong as an objection to artifacts as it was as an argument against heaps. Artifacts typically have a structure and organization that heaps lack. This structure might make it more plausible that it is the whole artifact that is the fundamental occupier of space, with the locations of its parts somehow dependent on the structure of the whole.

  1. Intrinsicality of composition. The first argument against artifacts appeals to the Intrinsicality of Composition:

  Intrinsicality of Composition. Whether or not the x's compose something fundamental depends only on the intrinsic nature and mutual relations of the x's, not on facts extrinsic to them.

  The composition of artifacts seems to be extrinsic in two ways. First, it is dependent on the attitudes and practices of their users and maintainers, and, second, it is dependent on their physical surroundings.

  Whether or not some things compose an artifact seems to depend on human intentions and actions that are extrinsic to the artifact itself. For example, suppose some ancient hunters shaped and chipped some rocks in order to form some crude implements, like axes and hammers. Thousands of years later, the chipped rocks have been abandoned and their functions forgotten. Do the axes and hammers still exist? Maybe, but it also seems plausible to say that all that remains are the chipped pieces of rock, now no different from other rocks that have been chipped or shaped by purely natural, unintentional processes.

  Here is another argument for the same conclusion. As we have seen, in certain cases, found objects can constitute an artifact, like a stump-chair or driftwood-art. Whether or not the wood in the stump constitutes a chair seems to depend wholly on whether or not it is used and maintained as a chair by external agents. Similarly, imagine that the exact duplicate of a watch were to form by chance in an asteroid field. The watch-duplicate wouldn't be a real watch, but the difference between it and the watch is entirely extrinsic.

  The existence of artifacts is extrinsic in a second way. Consider a statue that has been cut and chipped from a natural block of marble. The existence of the statue depends entirely on the physical surroundings of the marble making up the statue. That marble existed, with the very same size and shape, before the sculptor has removed any rock. The statue comes to exist, not by virtue of what happens to its internal material parts, but by virtue of what was done to the marble surrounding it.

  2. Arbitrariness of persistence conditions. Finally, when we try to determine under what conditions an artifact persists or fails to persist in existence, we seem to fall into a series of insoluble paradoxes and puzzles, suggesting that artifacts are not fundamentally real. We take up this issue in Section 25.1.2.

  22.6 Living Organisms vs. Mereological Nihilism

  We have seen that there are some good arguments against both Fundamental Heapism and Fundamental Artifactualism. This leaves us with just two possibilities. Either (1) living organisms (and their functional parts) exist and are fundamental composite things or (2) no fundamental composite thing exists. The first view is ‘Organicism’ and the second is ‘Priority Atomism’.

  22.6T Organicism. Some living organisms are fundamental composite material things.

  22.6T.1 Composite Persons. Living organisms that are persons capable of free will are fundamental composite material things.

  22.6A Anti-Organicism. Living organisms do not exist or are not fundamental composite, material things.

  22.7T Priority Atomism. There are no fundamental composite material things. All fundamental material things are atoms.

  Priority Atomism is simply the conjunction of Anti-Heapism, Anti-Artifactualism, and Anti-Organicism.

  22.6.1 Arguments for fundamental living organisms

  First, we examine two arguments against Extreme Anti-Organicism, namely, the appeal to common sense and Descartes' cogito argument. Then we move to three additional arguments against Moderate Anti-Organicism, each of which supports Composite Persons.

  1. Appeal to common sense. We start again with an appeal to common sense. We talk and act as though living organisms existed. In fact, we treat them and many of their properties, whether biological, psychological, or social, as among the fundamental entities of the world. This appeal is, like other appeals to common sense, subject to the familiar strategies of rebuttal. Moreover, in this case there are four other arguments that can be joined with common sense in support of living organisms, namely, the appeal to the Cartesian cogito, an appeal to our legal, ethical, and political practices, an appeal to free will and irreducible human agency, and the charge that Priority Atomism involves a vicious circularity.

  2. The cartesian cogito argument.3 If heaps, artifacts, and living organisms don't exist, then there are no composite entities at all. What about us? As Descartes famously argued (an argument anticipated by St. Augustine), it is impossible for me to doubt that I exist, since whatever I may be led to doubt, I will still be doubting something, and I cannot doubt anything unless I exist. This is Descartes' cogito argument (from the Latin for ‘I think’): I think, therefore I must exist. The cogito argument may not be airtight as a refutation of extreme skepticism, but as a beginning point for a sober and sane approach to metaphysics it is hard to resist. As Descartes himself, argued, the cogito seems to establish, not only that I exist, but that I have certain essential properties (properties of a sentient and mental character) that are at least prima facie irreducible to the merely physical properties of my proper parts (see Koons and Bealer 2010 for contemporary support for these convictions). If Priority Atomism entails that I, as a composite material thing, do not exist as a fundamental entity, then I would seem to have an excellent reason for rejecting it.

  However, it is possible to embrace both Priority Atomism and Descartes's cogito, so long as I deny that I am composite. I could exist, even if no composite things existed, so long as I were a perfectly simple thing, a thing without proper parts. I could, for instance, be a simple soul, an immaterial being with no parts. Alternatively, as Roderick Chisholm (1976) pro
posed (and as Leibniz seems to have believed), I could be a simple material entity, some elementary particle that is located in my brain, a thinking and willing particle that interacts somehow with the other particles in my brain. Indeed, according to panpsychism, all particles are thinking, conscious entities!

  The view that I am such a simple being, whether material or immaterial, is in some conflict with our common-sense view of our selves, putting the case for Organicism into some internal conflict.

  On our common-sense view, I am both physical and mental. I have mental properties and powers, like thinking, feeling, consciousness, and physical powers and properties like volume, mass, and chemical composition. Thus, on our ordinary view I am composite but possess essentially unitary passive powers, like the powers of sensory experience and volitional self-determination. In addition, I am able to move my body, which seems to require emergent active powers. I move my hand; the particles that make up my body don't move the hand by themselves.

  In addition, even if I am a simple soul or simple particle, what about my body? Surely it exists and is composite. The cogito argument, therefore, supplies evidence for Organicism by supplying evidence for Composite Persons and for the fundamental existence of other minded organisms, both of which entail Organicism.

  AVOIDING ARBITRARY DISTINCTIONS AMONG SIMILAR PLURALITIES It would surely be crazy to adopt a view we could call ‘Priority Solipsism’, the thesis that I'm the only fundamental composite thing. If I exist fundamentally and am composite, then if some particles are arranged in the same way that my parts are arranged, then they should compose something of the same kind as me, namely, a person.

  This principle raises an obvious problem: where is the most natural place to draw the line? All persons? All sentient organisms or animals? All living things? Even bacteria, viruses, prions?

  Van Inwagen proposes (1990a) that we draw the line at cells and living organisms. Van Inwagen's answer to the Special Composition Question is that the x's compose something if and only if their activities constitute a single life. Trenton Merricks (2003), in contrast, takes seriously the possibility of limiting composition to persons only, that is, to entities with self-determining free will.4 Merricks's more restrictive answer would be that the x's compose something fundamental if and only if their activities constitute the life of a person, a being with emergent powers of will. Clearly, there are a great many alternative positions. We might limit composition to those organisms that are sentient or conscious. We might try to exclude viruses and prions by insisting that the lives in question be relatively independent of the activities of other living things, although obviously no living thing is completely independent of other living things, and we don't want to treat complex parasites like tapeworms in the same way as viruses and prions.

  If, with Merricks, we believe that the strongest argument against heaps and artifacts is the appeal to the Redundancy principle, then the question of where to draw the line will be answered by locating the point at which we first encounter emergent active powers and essentially unitary passive and immanent powers. This, in turn, may require us to look both to empirical science and to philosophical reflection on human experience, broadly considered. Van Inwagen makes no claims about emergent active powers, either in the case of human persons or in the case of living organisms more broadly. In fact, van Inwagen and many other contemporary philosophers consider emergent active powers to be dubious and outré in the extreme, based on some sort of principle of naturalism or physicalism. We will take up this challenge to an emergence-based account of Organicism in the next section.

  3. Appeal to ethics, law, and politics. In our practices of laws, politics, and morality, we presuppose the fundamental reality of persons. If persons did not really exist and were utterly lacking in active, passive, and immanent powers, then our practice of holding people accountable for their actions in certain cases would make no sense. If human beings and sentient animals lacked the essentially unitary passive power of sensation, we could not explain the moral wrongness of cruelty. This argument relies on the Ethical Practices Presumption:

  PEpist 2.1 Ethical Practices Presumption. It is prima facie plausible to suppose that all of the presuppositions of our fundamental ethical beliefs and practices are true.

  4. Appeal to free will and human agency. Van Inwagen developed an influential argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism in his An Essay on Free Will (1986b). The argument turns on the idea that, if I have free will, then it must be in my power to make it either true or false that I perform certain actions. If determinism is true, and if I have no power to make any proposition about the past true or false, then it follows that I lack free will, since in a deterministic world those past truths (over which I have no power) entail all future truths. The argument depends on van Inwagen's rule Beta: if I have no power over the truth of p, and p entails q, then I have no power over the truth of q.

  This argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism can be modified into an argument for the incompatibility of free will and the non-fundamentality of persons:

  If I am not a fundamental entity, then any personal action A that I take is wholly grounded in some facts X1, … , Xn (where these are propositions that describe the movements of my constituent micro-particles).

  If I'm not a fundamental entity, then I was not able to prevent the truth of X1, … , Xn: it was not in my power to make these facts be other than they are.

  Necessarily, if X1, … , Xn, then I do A (since A is wholly grounded in X1, … , Xn).

  The Beta rule: if I was not able to prevent the truth of X1, … , Xn, and if the truth of X1, … , Xn entails the truth of A, then I am not able to prevent the fact that I do A, that is, it was not in my power to make it that I act otherwise.

  If it was not in my power to make it that I act otherwise, then I am not personally responsible for my doing A.

  So, if I am not a fundamental entity, then I am not personally responsible for my doing A.

  But I am personally responsible for my doing A. Hence, I am a fundamental entity.

  The weakest link in the argument is probably premise 2. Neo-Humeists in particular will object, as they would object to the corresponding step in van Inwagen's original argument. Much turns on what is required for my having the power to prevent a truth. If it simply means that in the nearest world in which I act differently, my particles also act differently, then it is obvious that I have such power over truths about my particles, even if they are fundamental entities and I am not. In contrast, if we think of powers as fundamental properties or as consequences of fundamental laws, as per Powerism or Nomism, it seems that non-fundamental entities must be essentially powerless.

  5. A vicious circularity in Priority Atomism? Suppose one thought that facts that are grounded in, derived from, or reducible to the fundamental facts are at least in part constituted by our conventions or the contingencies of our conceptual scheme. On this view, non-fundamental facts are projections of contingent features of us as thinkers or as language users. If one embraces this view, Priority Atomism, who suppose that we are merely derived entities, face a problem of vicious circularity. If people are among the derived entities, then they would have to be both the projectors and the projections. If we are merely derived entities, what fundamental entities could be responsible for our quasi-existence? This objection seems especially cogent to one who argues that human persons are logically or conceptually grounded in impersonal facts.

  22.6.2 Argument against fundamental living organisms: physicalism and emergent powers

  As we mentioned above, the main objection to Organicism and to Composite Persons is based on Physicalism. Physicalism is the view that only physical (indeed, onlymicro-physical) phenomena are fundamentally real. All fundamental truths, on this view, are truths about the positions, motions, and inherent powers of micro-physical particles and fields. Such Physicalism absolutely rules out the existence of emergent active powers at
the level of macroscopic objects such as organisms or persons. Any action of an organism or person is simply the joint action of its constituent particles and fields.

  Physicalism. All fundamental truths are truths about the positions, motions, and inherent powers of microscopic particles and fields.

  Why believe that Physicalism is true? The principal argument for Physicalism is empirical: we have discovered how, in broad terms, to reduce the phenomena of the macroscopic world to the microscopic. We can explain much, and we think that in principle we could probably explain all, of the behavior of molecules, crystals, fluids, cells, organisms, mountains, oceans, planets, stars, and galaxies in terms of the four fundamental forces of microscopic physics, like gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. We have shown how nearly all of the familiar objects of the macroscopic scale are wholly composed of a small number of fundamental particles (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and a few others), and we find little or no reason to believe that these particles ever behave in ways that could not in principle be explained by the powers that they manifest in isolated, experimental conditions.