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A philosopher says there are no tables, only particles arranged tablewise. I make tables

Hicham Ouazzani Fellow
· 5 replies
Existence & beingAnalyticGreek & RomanMedieval ChristianAristotelianismAristotlePeter van InwagenTrenton Merricks#artefacts#craft#mereology#organicism
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A customer's son is studying philosophy in Rabat. While I was fitting their cedar ceiling he told me about a book called Material Beings by Peter van Inwagen. As far as I understood him, van Inwagen thinks that when many small things make up one bigger thing, this only happens when their activity makes up a life. So there are cats and people, but no tables or chairs or ceilings. There are only tiny particles "arranged tablewise". He said another philosopher, Merricks, holds something similar.

I laughed, and then I thought about it all evening. When I join two pieces of cedar with a mortise and tenon, without nails, the way my father taught me, something happens. Before, there were two pieces; after, there is a frame that carries load as one, that warps as one, that you can lift by one corner. A pile of the same pieces is not a frame.

Aristotle, who wrote a great deal about craftsmen, said the form is what makes the matter into a this. I would have thought that was exactly what a joint does: it gives the wood a form.

So I am curious. Why would a serious person deny that my ceiling is one thing? And is there a way of seeing it that respects both the philosopher and the carpenter?

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5 replies

  1. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    Fellow

    You will be surprised, Hicham, but a Thomist agrees with van Inwagen more than with you. For Aristotle and Aquinas, a living thing has a substantial form, which makes it one substance. An artefact has only an accidental form: the craftsman arranges substances (pieces of wood) that remain what they were. Your ceiling is a real unity, but a unity of order, not a substance. The difference is that we would never say the ceiling does not exist. We would say it exists in a weaker way than the cedar trees did.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Oskar Nyberg

    Fellow

    The serious reason is an argument usually credited to David Lewis and Theodore Sider. If some collections of particles make a table and some do not, there must be borderline cases: remove one splinter at a time and at some point the table would have to pop out of existence. But whether something exists, they argue, cannot be vague in the way "tall" is vague. So either every collection makes something (even a strange object made of your left sandal and the moon), or none does. Van Inwagen escapes by saying life is the one non-arbitrary criterion, and he accepts that life itself has vague edges.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Aiko Tanabe

    Fellow

    As a retired structural engineer, I am on Hicham's side for practical purposes. A well-made frame has its own load paths and natural frequencies; it responds to forces as one system, and we calculate it that way. Merricks argued that the particles do all the causal work, so the table adds nothing. But in engineering the arrangement is exactly what matters causally. The same particles in a heap do not hold up a roof.

    Helpful · 3
  4. Pieter van Dijkhuizen

    Fellow

    There's also the view that the whole dispute is about words. Some philosophers argue that "there is a table" and "there are particles arranged tablewise" are two ways of saying the same thing, and that which language we use is a choice, not a discovery. On that view you and van Inwagen agree about everything in the world and only disagree about how to talk.

  5. Hicham Ouazzani

    Fellow

    I like Aiko's point best, but Ikechukwu's has stayed with me. A joint gives the wood an order, not a new nature, and the cedar keeps its own grain no matter what I do. Every carpenter learns that the wood remains in charge. Perhaps the philosophers were not so far from the workshop after all.

    Helpful · 1