Do Composite Objects Exist? | Dr. Eric Olson

Dr. Eric Olson joins me to discuss various puzzles of material constitution and composition. Do birds exist? Do tables? Do you?
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OUTLINE
00:00 A note
1:01 Intro and overview
2:01 Defining terms
8:34 Statue and clay
24:11 Sorites
31:00 Problem of the Many
37:30 Causal redundancy
41:50 Conclusion
LINKS
(1) Dr. Olson's website: olsonphilosophy.blogspot.com/
(2) Dr. Olson's PhilPeople profile: philpeople.org/profiles/eric-...
(3) Relevant SEP entries: (i) plato.stanford.edu/entries/or... (ii) plato.stanford.edu/entries/ma... (iii) plato.stanford.edu/entries/pr... (iv) plato.stanford.edu/entries/so...
(4) My Springer book: (a) www.amazon.com/Existential-In... (b) link.springer.com/book/10.100...
THE USUAL...
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[@joelturnbull4038]

When I studied philosophy, problems like these struck me as deeply troubling, but most people don’t think they’re even worth thinking about. Thanks for putting this together.

[@not_enough_space]

I'm not really a philosopher myself, but it seems to me there's a non-metaphysical and non-fundamental sense in which we say objects exist. That is, as we live our lives in the world we do some common-sense human categorizing of the contents of our experience. A lump of clay and a bust made of that clay both seem more appropriately captured by that non-metaphysical activity of categorizing. I'd wonder how appropriate it is to demand that metaphysics capture the same distinctions and come to the same results.

[@idanzigm]

you're totally right there are 2 conversations happening around physically objects in philosophy of language, which describes how and why do we define the words we use. See Wittgenstein for some interesting philosophy on how natural language come about. But there is also a technical conversation on how we define precisely and metaphysically physical objects, so they can be talked about coherently in logic and predicate calculus. So I don't believe that goal is to make our metaphysics line up with natural language, I think the goal is just to give an account that's plausible enough that you can gain traction in other metaphyscial arguments on other topics that rely on facts about existence and what exists.

[@TheWTFcakes]

This is irrelevant, but I recently discovered that my partner also regularly watches your videos. I think I found the one, lol. thanks for all the brain food, and hi babe if you see this 😂

[@MajestyofReason]

Common MoR viewer W

[@bronsonvann2662]

Wouldn’t a functional view of objects take care of most of these problems? The clay Socrates statue would get destroyed when it is squished because that clump of clay no longer functions as an image of Socrates. You could apply this the same way with the question “when does joe become a child vs an adult?” It would be when he takes on the function of an adult in his society (including the privileges and responsibilities). This could even apply to the question of “what constitutes our body” when we are constantly changing cells and atoms, the atoms that constitute our body are those which allow us to move, shape the world, and act as our apparatus in the physical world. Granted, with that last point there could still be issues like in organ transplants of “when does the donor’s kidney become the recipient’s kidney, if ever” but for the most part a functional view of object constitution seems to check off most of the boxes and seems intuitively plausible. (And if the question arises as to whether these functions are real or meaningful in any sense, I’m pretty sure either Aristotle or Aquinas held the view that the telos of objects are extensions of the telos of humans and that objects have no nature in and of themselves)

[@bigol7169]

I agree, the functional definition is useful outside of the philosophy of mind. Chairs, after all, are ‘multiply realisable’… their material composition isn’t what defines them. However, this functional definition can only go so far, as many things are essentially defined, by their material makeup, like elements and metals and water. Nothing but H2O is water. That is what defines it.

[@zverh]

I think aristotle explains "form" as function in physics.

Man, I really love Olson!! A great metaphysician!

[@gabri41200]

LOL the first recomended video for me is the Vsauce video " Do chairs exist?"

[@bengreen171]

when I listen to these sorts of discussions, my mind invariably turns to the brilliant song by the Super Furry Animals - 'Rocks are slow life'. I find it's always a satisfying answer.

[@pesilaratnayake162]

A systems-based approach can give useful insight into this I think. A system can be considered as any combination of objects, fundamental or otherwise, and we can study those things which affect it external to itself (inputs), its inner properties, that may change in response to each other or its inputs (states), and how it affects other things (outputs). Much of this seems to be about conceptualising things, such as how much is a heap, which subsets comprise a dog, etc. But this has to do with how our brains identify that which is from that which is not, and not necessarily an ontological problem. We train our brains through concept attainment on what is a dog, and that provides our more visceral sense of what it means for something to be a dog. But that gets challenged when we see one with 3 legs due to an amputation. I know dogs have four legs but this one used to, so it still counts. But what if we changed it gradually to have two stomachs, or to no longer have mammary glands? Well then it might still look like a dog, but it doesn't have the properties that we would expect of a dog. Is the mouse with a human ear considered a mouse? It seemed to be living. These are questions about how things output their properties to be inputs to other things (e.g., dogs physical appearance to be received by human eyes), and how that interacts with our brain states concept of what it means for something to be a dog. From a materialist perspective, these things follow that systems can be made of smaller systems, producing systems of larger order and complexity. This complexity can be approximated using lumped parameter models instead of distributed parameter models, and that's what we do in our brains. We don't see every hair on a dog as a separate objects, or every cell or atom if we could see that level of detail. Our brains couldn't process that or make calculations quickly enough to function like that. We use simplified models and heuristics that allow us to treat this group of pieces that seem to move or not move in a coordinated manner as one thing with a few properties rather than 10^26 or so things that interact with each other in probabilistic ways. And when we need to, we can study that one thing as, for example sections of skin which may or may not have a malignant growth in it. We create models based on what we are observing and what we are looking for. We see a bust because we have associations of what makes something look human. An octopus on the sea floor that stumbles upon the bust would not see it as a sculpture. It may be an odd shaped lump of clay compared to others it has experienced. Oddly bilaterally symmetric, but not a sculpture. It's only meaningful if there is a concept to which it refers. But a dolphin who has seen humans may recognise it as being human-like in appearance, despite not knowing how that came to be. Every lump of clay that kind of looks like something else had a sculptor!

[@nathanroush8918]

I think what these dilemmas point to is that we need more than 2 fundamental principles in order to account for change. You have to come to recognize that you just cannot account for change with only two variables at play (matter and form). You need a third in order to have enough degrees of freedom to even find a solution. We need at least a third principle, which Aristotle calls privation in order to account for change/composition and we can know this just by recognizing what is required to even begin to account for change. If you think change is real you need 3 principles. Whether you accept Aristotle’s concept of privation or not we should all be able to agree that 3 principles are needed.

[@jamescantrell2092]

I'm mostly attracted to the dialethia of it being the case that there are only simples and there is only one universal.

[@CMVMic]

It seems there are composite objects in a linguistic sense but they are all of the same object/substance. They are the forms/ways of being as a result of motion. Now, it seems Nominalism must be true and 'abstract objects' are simply labels for functions. There may not even be a hierarchy/structure to reality. In this view, there is no objective difference between life and non-life. It is merely distinguished by the motion of a particular form of substance. There is no interaction problem if substance monism holds true. Thus, it seems there are three fundamental aspects of reality/existence. Substance, Space, Motion. All three must exist as brute facts and they all encompass reality. Without these aspects, logical/linguistics relations would not exist and, thus existence becomes a meaningless concept equivalent to nonexistence. These three aspects should be discussed further. 1. Space is the container in which existence is. It cannot have a boundary (it begs the question 'what is the boundary of the boundary'/Why should there be a boundary?) nor is it infinite (it cannot gain what does not exist i.e. it cannot keep growing, it must have an actual size). Therefore, space must be loop back in on itself, which leads me to believe if you go any direction long enough you will come back from the other side. e.g. if you go left long enough you will come back from the right. 2. Substance is that which existence consists/is made of. Forms are the result of motion. Motion allows the substance to stretch in concentration/distribution giving the appearance of separation. Without space, there can be no distinctions/appearances of separation nor volume of an object. There obviously could not be energy without space but could there be space without energy? It seems space intrinsic to substance, for space would be meaningless if it was not a thing. 3. Motion seems to be where the true paradox lies. Without motion, there can be no meaningful definition of time nor conscious experience. Endurantism seems to hold to an A theory of time i.e. to say substance(s) persists. Whereas, Perdurantism seems to arbitrarily assume distinctions between events. If there are no objectively real distinctions, it would be one static long node highlighting merely the illusion of change. Where, change would be the illusionary events organized in a cyclical pattern. The Poincare Recurrence Theorem seem to provide goods reason in support of this view. If everything was static, there would be no way to determine how long a thing/object was static for or if it was static to begin with, however, this would not necessarily mean a thing can not be static, we simply would not be able to determine if a thing absolutely was. If a B theory of time is assumed, then what accounts for the illusion of motion. This may lead one to view motion as an intrinsic property of substance Now, there seems to be no account for the emergence of motion because for motion to emerge from non-motion, there must be change. But how does change emerge from an unchanging thing? It can be said that something is changeable and can transition between states of change/non-change but what accounts for such a mechanism. It must be that energy is always in motion otherwise we can ask for an explanation leading to an infinite regress of explanations. How does change emerge spontaneously with no explanation? Without an explanation, the existence of change would a mere brute fact. Now, Change implies distinctions between states or the gain/loss of a property but then this begs the question 'how does existence gain a property that isn't already part of existence'. If being static was a property, how does existence lost this property? The property of being static would transition to a state of non-existence but non-existence is not a state. It seems there can be no explanation for this and thus, it must be either due to brute necessity or it is metaphysically impossibility. So whilst it would not necessarily follow that for existence to be eternal, it must be changeless, it does seem plausible to hold that change is an illusion despite how counter-intuitive it seems. Hence, a Parmenidean view of reality would seem tenable in such regard. This is supported by the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit. Since nothing cannot be a state, substance or a thing in the broadest sense, it would be logically impossible for the existence of a thing to transition to it. It is hard to define emergence in such a case as such a term would be incoherent.

[@christopherp.8868]

Is there an infinite chain of composition? When I look at an "object" is it infinitely nuanced? and therefore is that the reason as to why composite objects don't exist? Sounds like a very deterministic point of view. Or is there something fundamental/underlying...does it just stop at atoms? Does that imply quantum mechanics? Do concrete objects exist? is there cause and effect with concrete objects or just causal power?

[@drugin4168]

Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.

[@macdougdoug]

The new thing (that arises from composition) is consciousness (or conscious experience)? In abiogenesis the new thing was the new property that arose fom the composition eg. self replication.

[@quakers200]

Seems like a discussion about the inadequacies of language to provide unambiguous meaning to the world we experience. The other part of the problem is how we or any other thinking beings know out perceptions are valid. Enter better languages with better grammar vocabulary and so on. Science is providing better means of knowing the material world.

[@roqsteady5290]

Categories are created by us to be useful to us, they are not a part of some underlying reality or platonic archetype. After all, who wants to give every molecule that we consider to be a constituent part of ourselves a different name? What would be the purpose of that?

[@blob12345]

For his issue with vagueness of properties, it seems strange to focus on there being no semantic unclarity about the word exist. Lets grant that there is not, but then we are still left with unclarity for the word dog or human or brain which seems to be there.

[@tonybanks1035]

Hi Joe, do you plan on answering McNabb? Will it be a video, article or another book? Just joking ^^ I started reading your book, it is very well put together, a delight for the brain that enjoys rigouros analytic thinking. I think the value in a philosophical essay/work lies more in its form than in its content.

[@MajestyofReason]

Great to see you here, and much love

[@MajestyofReason]

As for the medium of my response, I'll use my blog!

[@gangsterspongebob5492]

can you give me your thoughts on this response to the problem of evil? most if not all good is evil/suffering reduction humans cant reduce evil if there is no evil (most) evil exists so humans can reduce it

[@markbirmingham6011]

By my lights, hylomorphism’s substance first ontology makes the most sense by allowing the retention of the everyday world of physical objects, while still accounting for the reductive aspects of physical reality. It takes seriously the resulting changes in physical elements due to chemistry & biology. Generally speaking, substantial change can be tracked by the emergence and loss of causal powers and essential properties. A Living cat is a substance-capable manifesting all sorts of catlike behavior & capacities. A cat thrown through a wood chipper has undergone substantial change into something akin to dead or dying cat parts (cat blood, cat liver parts, cat fur,)-even if every cell/atom is accounted for there are new substances after (heaven forbid) the wood chipper. There’s no purring or hunting of mice following the wood-chipper. Conversely, when hydrogen and oxygen combine to create water (H2O) a new substance is created that has new essential features, properties, & powers different from the underlying elements. (New boiling point, freezing point, molecular make up, liquid). I also like the example of making an axe. Which would be classified as a man made artifact made up of 2 distinct substances that when arranged in a certain accidental (non essential) manner can be used to cut things. Suppose The handle is wood (substance 1). It exhibits certain essential characteristics & properties. When the blade is attached to the axe handle that’s just an accidental (non essential) arrangement between the 2 substances, wood & iron. The axe is just an artifact-not a new substance onto itself. There’s a wooden handle and an iron blade. The wood and iron retain their essential properties. This substance vs artifact distinction I think helps clarify the statue vs clay discussion. The stature is just an artifact composed of the underlying clay substance. The stature is an accidental arrangement of clay. Admittedly, there are mysterious scientific questions as to how exactly all the subatomic parts work together to support the atoms that comprise the cells that make up the organs, bones, & fur that make up my living dog. But my experience, intuition, and biology all tell me there’s a unity there that exhibits certain causal powers & capacities. Both the unity & causal powers go away following the death of my dog. Additionally, that unity is substantially different than the creation of a pencil, an artifact. Again, by my lights

[@lotsofstuff9645]

What I find interesting about this is what it’s really exposing is that our idea of “what is a thing” is only a language problem and therefore is entirely arbitrary. We seem to be looking for some sort of objective justification for something arbitrary. So it’s probably a simpler problem that is made complex by trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. We might as well be arguing why blue is better than red. Is a chair is a thing, it only becomes a thing because we have the ability to call it a thing. If I attach some tape to the chair I could give that new thing a name or I could not. I could say the chair a thing or I could say it is a bunch of things. There’s not going to be an objective standard for this. If I came up with reasoning to justify that there was an objective truth because of reason A, that is again just me making an arbitrary decision to do that.

[@zoranbeader6441]

Yes, definitions say more about human nature than they do about the nature of the things we are defining.

[@idanzigm]

I'm going to interpret this as: anything can be an object (becuase anything can be spoken about as an object). I believed that until I watched this video. Take the lump of clay talked about in the beginning. If you took that lump of clay and said "it's a bust of Socrates" just look at the parts that make the bust and ignore the rest of the clay. You'd know exactly what I was talking about, the language is perfectly comprehensible. but it's not a bust of Socrates, the fact that the object I've defined exists within the a block of clay that stops it from being a bust, regardless of how you define the object. I think it's plausible to say that same of some composite objects made of random stuff.

[@zicada7661]

What about dogs and corn ? Does Carolina Reaper exist ? What about bridges made from the roots of live trees ?

[@legron121]

I have't studied this issue in sufficient detail, but it seems to me that the "problem of the many" is solved by simply rejecting the claim that a material object or animal is a particular collection of particles. After all, if that were true, then an animal would become a different animal (i.e. particular collection of particles) whenever it lost any particle.

[@idanzigm]

I stopped being a child the precise instant i saw my father cry

[@lolroflmaoization]

I hope your surgery went well.

[@MiladTabasy]

I think if we balance things even in philosophy we will find God. For example we can say that if we analytically search the smallest components of things we will find non-existence but on the other hand if we synthetically consider a thing we will find existence. This means that our epistemic focus determines what we think about things. But how to balance it? 1) If we search components of things we find nothing 2) if we consider a thing as a whole we will find something 3) the thing must have another explanation for its existence than its components. 4) That explanation is God.

[@gg2008yayo]

Are you a christian or a theist? Just curious hope you dont mind me asking

[@donaldmcronald8989]

Thanks again, Joe. Gluck with the knee.

[@bigol7169]

What happened to your ACL bro

[@gabbiewolf1121]

15:53 My response to the consciousness multiplicity problem if I were a universalist or a restrictivist would be that both I and the lump of flesh using the same matter as me are conscious, but that the consciousness of both of them is either the same part or that it's the identically same function of both of them. So there would be one consciousness and there would be a person and a lump of flesh that share that one consciousness

[@brandtgill2601]

The birds work for the bourgeoisie

[@ReflectiveJourney]

What is wrong with Aristotle's original view?. Though = being and even clay is a form. Matter is the "last" form in some sense and has limit minimal intelligibility. It seems to beg the question if you assume matter to be a determinate being.

[@thescoobymike]

Isn’t every object a composite object?

[@user-lv9gm3fe6j]

Reality may bottom out at simple entities not composed of parts. I'm not sure anyone knows whether or not it does.

[@Biblig]

Gunk respector

[@blob12345]

Even all its constituents?

[@thescoobymike]

@@blob12345 probly not

[@blob12345]

Oops i should have said parts not constituents. That may be confusing.

[@DaKoopaKing]

Please interview WITTGENSTEIN

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

When Dr. Olsen explains why he believes he exists, in some sense, it almost sounds like he’s saying that he has a sort of stance about personhood being a legitimate category of objects or something like that. Not sure I’m using the terms correctly but I think I want to say it seems constructivist to some degree. Could also just be that I don’t know enough to say much about it.

[@biggerdoofus]

Why should the explanation be satisfying if it's the only one that doesn't result in immediate contradictions? Also, why use a definition of "exist" that guarantees you won't be satisfied? Yes, the phenomenon that is "me" exists, by I don't see why that requires me to be the actual material object or some meta object. Why can't I just be an emergent property of a bunch of materials interacting?

[@truthseeker2275]

I think no material objects exist, I think everything we observe are processes made out of energy (a process based ontology). Through our historical philosophy, we have silo'ed our thinking onto an object ontology, either objects exist or they are made out of smaller objects that exits... this leads to a lot of paradoxes and the notion that we are only molecules in motion. But if you for a moment step back and consider everything as processes then existence takes on more than an 'only molecules in motion' notion and paradoxes disolve.

[@imitationgame2328]

Why do you think so?

[@truthseeker2275]

@@imitationgame2328 With what little I know about particle physics, it seems the base ontology is energy, and even space-time may not be part of the base ontology (see Nima Arkani-Hamed ). If that is the case, our folk understanding of objects and mereology may just be wrong.

[@sheev973]

Composite objects exist, but at 4,000 meters deep underwater they dont exist very well amirite Isnt the statue thing just based on how a subjective observer decides to catagorise a group of atoms? To say the statue is "too many objects" - couldn't I just say each individual atom is an object and the statue and clay are both collective objects of the same smaller atoms which mutually exist just based upon features associated with catagorisation methods? The clay is still clay - I am just changing features which are not inherent to clayness but are inherent to statueness since we catagorise them with different methods. These features are emergent from the structuring of material reality, not material stuff itself. Just like I would say my existence is emergent from the structure of physical reality. That does not mean I don't exist, it just means my existence is dependent upon the structure of reality - just like how it depends on food, water, etc.

[@MichaelPiz]

This is all entirely absurd. If anyone cares to hear it, I'll elaborate.

[@CMVMic]

Well go on...

[@veggiehamb8666]

Birds aren't real.

[@gabbiewolf1121]

I finished the video and it destroyed my faith in part-hood even further. On reflection on the problem of the many and other problems like the problem of indefinite temporal endings and beginnings I think it's open that these problems could be resolved for dogs, but it seems much harder to resolve them for piles of sand, bodies of liquid, and atmospheres. I don't want to get into the details, but it seems like treating multiplicities of simples acting as piles of sand, bodies of liquid, and atmospheres as objects is merely a pragmatic convention rather than a reflection of real existence. As for other composite objects, I'm really not sure, but I'm significantly less confident in restrictivism than I used to be. Even further I'm about equally confident in views of restrictivism where the only composite things are lumps and views of restrictivism where lumps aren't the only composite things. At the end of the day my credences are 0.09 to universalism, 0.01 to restrictivism where no lumps exist, 0.3 to lumpy & non-lumpy composite restrictivism, 0.3 to lumpy only composite restrictivism, and 0.3 to compositional nihilism. In my lights things don't look good for "me" really existing rather than being a conventional term for the purposes of simplification. Then again I don't really care. I haven't thought of my thoughts belonging to a cohesive self for over a year now and I'm still doing alright. In fact in some ways I'm functioning better than ever The thing I am the most certain in is that some multiplicity or singularity of objects can act thinking wise

[@gaseredtune5284]

Anyone who thinks composite objects don't exist is preposterous and needs to quit their philosophy job