Philosophy 2 Week 3 Essay Quiz

● Wiggins begins by noting that the following principle is a truism “frequently called in evidence and confidently relied upon”: Principle S: two things cannot be in the same place at the same time He then amends this principle to make it more exact and, hence, plausible: Principle S: two things cannot completely occupy exactly the same place (or exactly the same volume) for exactly the same period of time This is the claim that (exact) collocation is impossible What about a sponge and the water that makes it a wet sponge? This does not count against S either; there are sponge molecules and water molecules and where the former are, the latter are not ● Wiggins wants to investigate why it has to be the case that Principle S is true Well, it turns out that Principle S is not true, not as stated. Wiggins argues for this perhaps surprising claim via the following considerations Consider a certain tree, T, which occupies a certain volume, v1, at a certain time, t1. All and only v1 is also occupied by the aggregate W of the cellulose molecules that compose the tree Indeed, it is their occupation of v1 that precisely determines that the volume that the tree occupies is v1 Therefore, the tree T and the cellulose molecules W are in exactly the same place at exactly the same time Yet they are distinct, not identical If this is so, Principle S is false ● But are T and W distinct? It might seem plausible to say that there is just one thing there in that space, v1 Wiggins’ argument that T and W are distinct turns on a philosophical principle that no one denies: Leibniz’s Law: if A = B, then whatever feature A has (including whatever relations in which A stands) B also has (and so stands in those relations) So, Wiggins can show that T and W are distinct if there is some genuine feature that T has that W lacks, or vice versa

● Wiggins thinks that T and W differ with respect to their persistence conditions the persistence conditions for a kind, K, are those conditions that an instance of K can undergo without ceasing to be so to say that T and W differ with respect to their persistence conditions is to say that there are conditions that T can undergo that would destroy W (or vice versa) Suppose T were chopped down and then dismembered and cut up in such a way that no cellulose molecule is damaged under these conditions, T is destroyed, but W survives Suppose, on the other hand, that T is pruned and the clippings burned or that the tree undergoes an organic change that destroys some of the original wood cells under these conditions, W is destroyed, but T survives ● Wiggins points out that these considerations that seem to show that Principle S is false applied to a natural kind, like a tree, also apply to artifacts, that is, things that do not occur in nature independently of any maker Consider: one has a wool sweater at time t1. One can unwind the wool of the sweater, wrapping it into a ball, then crochet a pair of socks from the wool at t2 If the wool and the sweater were the same thing, that is, if the wool just were the sweater, then the wool just is the pair of socks But then that means that the sweater is the socks! However, the sweater and the socks have lots of different features: the sweater fits on one’s torso, the socks do not; the socks came into existence (from a ball of wool) at t2, but the sweater existed prior to t2 (namely, at t1) ● So Wiggins thinks, in general, a kind and the stuff out of which it is made are distinct, they are different things, but closely related He says, with respect to the tree, T, and the wood out of which it is made, W, that T and W are distinct, but it is not the case that “T is something over and above W” This locution is weird; it seems that if one thing is distinct from another that the one is indeed over and above the other But Wiggins means by this that although things are distinct, they can still be so closely related that they do not really make distinct contributions to the world T is not W, yet T is made of or is constituted of or consists of W

Wiggins thinks that to say that one thing, A, is over and above another, B, is to say that there is more matter, more stuff, to A than there is to B And this is exactly what he denies in the case of the tree and the wood out if which it is made ● Wiggins denies that a tree and the wood out of which it is made are the same thing, but he does not think that this is spooky and interestingly anti-materialist He thinks that any interesting claim about trees can be understood in claims about wood (or ultimately about physics) Likewise, you are not your body, Wiggins would concede, but it does not mean that you are a soul or some sort of ghostly immaterial thing you are a material thing composed of matter In general, Wiggins thinks there is only stuff; things might come in levels, but all the real work is being done by the material stuff at the bottom ● In light of the foregoing, Wiggins revises his original Principle S to the following: S*: No two things of the same kind (that is, no two things which satisfy the same sortal or substance concept) can occupy exactly the same volume at exactly the same time He thinks this principle is necessarily true