Arete: The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University Issue 4, Spring 2011
Arete
Acknowledgements
As always we would like to acknowledge Mercedes Diaz for her invaluable help in making this Journal a reality.
PDF version assembled December 2011 by Brian Pollex. Mistakes, including omissions, are due to the lack of records available from the 2010-2011 session that produced Issue 4. Our apologies to the authors for their belated publication.
2 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
2010-2011 Staff
Executive Board Heather Katzoff Michael Licciardi Said Saillant
Editors Jason Popelsky Nadia Saleh Brian Pollex
And the students in 730:295, Fall 2010
3 Arete
Table of Contents
The Possibility of Legitimate States, and the Threat of Philosophical Anarchism…………………………………………………………………………6
Ziqian Zhou Now of University College, London
The Demise of Neutral Monism Due to the Simplicity Intuition…………...…26
Peter Colis University of Colorado
Arrangement and the Properties of Parts Manifest in Wholes…………...…..37
William Melendez Columbia University
4 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
5 Arete
The Possibility of Legitimate States, and the Threat of Philosophical Anarchism
Abstract: Philosophical Anarchism holds that actual states do not have legitimate political authority, nor are states with such authority even conceptually possible. While many find this thesis hard to swallow, it logically follows, however, from two relatively plausible premises, namely, the Legitimacy Thesis and the Denial Thesis. The aim of this paper is to resist the claim of the philosophical anarchist. I do so by undermining the various arguments put in favour for the Legitimacy Thesis and the Denial Thesis. In place of the Legitimacy Thesis, I recommend that we adopt what I call the Respect Thesis. This thesis, it will be argued, escapes some of the problems facing the Legitimacy Thesis, and benefits from capturing the very motivations for the latter. Crucially, if my arguments are successful, one then has reasons not to succumb to the position of the philosophical anarchist.
Introduction1 Although many in our world today continue to live in military regimes, while others labour under so-called benevolent dictatorships, it appears intuitive, self-evident even, that states with legitimate political authorities are possible. Indeed one wants to go further and claim that actual states fulfil this criterion. This widespread view—held, almost invariably, by those living in, as well as those contemplating, liberal democracies—is challenged by the following set of propositions:2 (Legitimacy Thesis) A state, X, has legitimate political authority only if those subjected to its jurisdiction have a moral obligation to obey the law. (Denial Thesis) It is not the case that we have a moral obligation to obey the law. (Philosophical Anarchism) So, no actual states have legitimate political authority, nor are such states even possible. There exist two notable arguments in favour of the Legitimacy Thesis, namely what I'll call the non-instrumental argument, and the instrumental argument. The non-instrumental argument, very roughly, says that if to have legitimate political authority is to have the right to rule those who are under one’s jurisdiction (Simmons 1979: 195-196), and given the correlativity between rights and obligations (Hohfeld 1917), then the proposition that a state possesses legitimate political authority would entail the proposition that its subjects have a corresponding moral obligation to obey its demands. The instrumental argument, on the other hand, holds that if the essential function of a legal order is to regulate human behaviour (Kelsen 1967: 31), and if a legitimate political authority must in fact be successful at regulating human behaviour, then such a function could not be successfully carried out unless legal subjects possess the moral obligation to obey
1 ∗ This paper has benefited from the close supervision I received from Dr Elinor Mason and Dr Campbell Brown (both from the University of Edinburgh). I must also thank Brian Pollex, the editor of Arete, for the many insightful comments he has very generously provided on an earlier draft of this essay. Due to my own limitations, I regret not being able to answer all of Brian’s worries in a more robust manner. 2 See also Edmundson 2004: 218.
6 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University the law. For centuries, philosophers have assumed that we have a moral obligation to obey the law; and that the intellectual focus should instead be on how one might justify such an obligation (i.e. the “problem of political obligation”). However, a number of contemporary academics, impelled, perhaps, by the political turmoil in America during the 1960s and ‘70s, have come to deny that we possess such an obligation. Indeed, these writers make the stronger claim that we owe no such moral obligations regardless of how just a state might in fact be. Their sceptical stance constitutes what I call the Denial Thesis. Given both theses, one is led to a conclusion that denies the possibility of legitimate political authorities, or what has come to be known as “philosophical anarchism”. The aim of this paper is to resist the thesis of the philosophical anarchist. I do this by arguing against both the Legitimacy Thesis and the Denial Thesis. In section 1, I begin by first considering the Denial Thesis. While subsection 1.1 is devoted solely to explicating the concept of an obligation to obey the law, the remaining subsections will critically consider the numerous arguments for the Denial Thesis. It is important to note that my aim in section 1 is to merely present a defence of the claim that we have a moral obligation to obey the law. It is beyond the scope of this essay to adjudicate between the various positive attempts at justifying why it might be the case that subjects of a state have such an obligation (e.g. consent theories, theories of natural duties, etc.). Considering the ubiquity of the intuition that we do have an obligation to obey the law,3 (Tyler 1990; Klosko 2005: 181-222), the burden of proof falls squarely on the sceptic. If the sceptic’sal arguments can be compromised, then I will have shown that we have better reason to at least withhold from, rather than assent to, the Denial Thesis. Section 2 is devoted to demonstrating the falsity of two arguments for the Legitimacy Thesis. I begin my critique, in subsection 2.1, by first showing that the instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis is not cogent. Moving on, I note that the Legitimacy Thesis appears to manifest itself more as a received doctrine than a claim that has been robustly argued for. Of the many authors who seem to treat the thesis as self-evident—Anscombe, Wolff, Smith, Simmons, Green, Soper, among others—Raz has provided what appears to be the best non-instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis.4 His account of the Legitimacy Thesis, then, will be treated in subsection 2.2. There, I will try to show that even the best extant argument for the thesis, i.e. Raz’s, fails to be fully convincing. Finally, in subsection 2.3, I will offer a suggestion on how the Legitimacy Thesis might be modified so as to not only escape the problem besetting Raz’s argument, but to also capture the motivations behind the doctrine as originally conceived.
§1 §1.1
3 In his research, social psychologist Tom Tyler reports that 82% of 1,575 people interviewed agreed that we should even obey laws with which we might disagree (1990: 46). But cf. Green ([1996]1999). 4 Other less plausible non-instrumental arguments for the Legitimacy Thesis were proposed by Carnes (1960) and Pitkin (1966).
7 Arete
The obligation to obey the law bears the following features. First, the obligation is a “prima facie”5 one, in that the reasons it generateare not conclusive. Reasons generated by “prima facie” obligations are liable to being overridden by countervailing reasons. Second, the obligation to obey the law is “general,” that is, the obligation applies to all legal norms, including those that do not impose obligations, such as norms that confer powers, liabilities, and so forth. Admittedly, it may seem unnatural to speak of an obligation with regards to the latter set of legal norms; but insofar as one cannot understand, say, the significance of the power to contract without understanding that it gives rise to an obligation to perform some act, the obligation to obey the law, then, does not merely undergird only those norms which impose obligations. Third, the obligation is “content-independent,” in that the existence of the obligation is not dependent on the merit of the particular law in question (Edmundson 2004: 216). This aspect is often expressed as the “obligation to obey the law qua law”. The content-independent obligation pre- empts the subject’s own assessment of the moral merits of the action required by the law. In what follows, whenever I write of the obligation to obey the law, readers should assume that this phrase makes reference to the three characteristics of such an obligation that I’ve outlined above. Finally, I assume that there exists an obligation to obey the law only if that specific legal institution, and the state that it serves, are sufficiently just.6 Should this requirement not obtain, then, “all bets are off”.
§1.2 The first objection to the existence of a moral obligation to obey the law can be framed in terms of a dilemma: P1. Either law L conflicts with morality or it does not. P2. If L does not conflict with morality, then the obligation to obey L would be redundant. P3. If L conflicts with morality, then there is no obligation to obey L. C. So, the obligation to obey L is either redundant or there is simply no such obligation [P1;P2;P3]. The above dilemma may be resisted may objecting to both P2 and P3. Let us first show P2 to be false. Among the law’s numerous functions is its instrumentality in solving co-ordination problems (Finnis 1980, 1989; Coleman 1989; Raz 1994: 247). Given that practical reasoning reveals a number of equally worthy courses of action to undertake (e.g. whether to drive on the left or right hand side of the road) there arise coordination problems, which “the law solves by making authoritative selections from among them [courses of action] for the community to adopt” (Aiyar 2000: 478). While practical reasoning may provide no reason as to whether or not I should drive on the left or right hand side of the road, the law intervenes by making it the case that all road users should stick to the left hand side of the road, such that I'm now obliged to comply with the law’s dictate. Additionally, the law is useful in regulating domains that require expert knowledge.7 Take for instance the regulation of pharmaceutical products. Here we defer to legal authorities for guidance. For, it may be the case that individual attempts to reach conclusions on whether certain drugs are safe for consumption would involve great financial expenditure.
5 I regard the term “prima facie” as somewhat misleading (as opposed to the term “pro tanto”), but I will continue to use it in order to keep my terminology consistent with that of the literature. 6 It is immaterial to this essay as to what the justness of a state consists in. 7 See Raz (1986): 75.
8 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Therefore, it is not redundant to speak of an obligation to obey the law. In cases where co-ordination problems might arise, or where expert knowledge is required, whether or not the law sanctions a certain course of action does makes a difference to what I'm obligated to do.8 Let us turn next to P3, the claim that there is no obligation to obey a law, L, which conflicts with morality. P3 can be read in two ways: (1) the process by which L came to be law is immoral, or (2) acting in accord with L would require citizens to take immoral actions. Start first with interpretation (1) of P3. It is well established in American law that no one may be punished for conduct that was not deemed criminal at the time it occurred (US Constitution, Art. I, §§9, 10). This seems to be a clear instance where there is no obligation to obey a law which conflicts with morality in sense (1). Turn now to interpretation (2) of P3. Two observations here suggest that there is no obligation to obey sufficiently immoral laws. First, some verdicts decided on constitutional grounds are instances of a putative legal obligation overturned as a result of conflicting with morality. An example here is Brown v. Topeka Board of Education [347 U.S. 483 (1954)] where the court held that racial segregation in American public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, if we believe some acts of civil disobedience to be morally justified, then it must be the case that the obligation to obey some sufficiently immoral law may be overridden on moral grounds. Since these two considerations show that there is no obligation to obey at least some laws which conflict with morality, so P3 understood in interpretation (2) seems to be false. Given that P3 is problematic in both senses (1) and (2), and that P2 is clearly false, the supposed dilemma generated by the obligation to obey the law can be resolved.
§1.3 Malcolm Smith ([1973]1999) argues that there is no prima facie obligation to obey the law. He first assumes that if there exist such an obligation to obey the law, then this obligation must possess “moral weight,” or be a “serious one” vis-à-vis other moral obligations.9 According to Smith, to show that a moral obligation possesses moral weight or is a serious obligation, such an obligation must satisfy either one of two criterion which he formulates as follow (Ibid.: 93- 94):
8 It bears remembering that the dilemma is not set up as an argument for the claim that there exists a moral obligation to obey the law. Rather, the dilemma is a potential argument that a proponent of the Denial Thesis might forward. Hence, when I make the claim that some laws function to solve co-ordination problems or to provide expert advice, I do not claim that it is in virtue of this fact that we have a moral obligation to obey the law qua law. As I'd remarked in the introductory section, a claim to the effect that we do have a moral obligation to obey the law qua law is precisely the task of theorists of political obligation. While this article is neutral about views of political obligation, I must again stress that I assume that at least one of these theories can account for the intuition that we do have an obligation to obey the law qua law (see footnote 2). Now it may be pressed against me: Doesn’t this commit me to saying that driving on the side of the road which the law has (contingently) prescribed a moral matter? But how can this be a moral matter when driving on the prescribed side of the road is, to be sure, a morally neutral matter? To this riposte I would add that nothing I have said thus far commits me to saying that the very act of driving on the left per se is a moral matter. Rather, it is the act of driving on the left insofar as the law has decreed so that is a moral matter. Driving on the left, then, is a matter both of prudence (on the assumption that everyone drives on the same side of the road) and of morality (insofar as the law has decreed so). 9 It is important to note that the locutions Smith introduces—such as obligations bearing a certain “moral weight”— are strictly terms of art, and should not be understood according to how we use such terms in our everyday linguistic practice. This point is worth stressing because if we interpret the notion of an obligation which bears “moral weight” or is “serious” according to their everyday senses we would be left with the implausible conclusion that all our moral obligation must be non-trivial or not serious—a position which I cannot honestly ascribe to Smith.
9 Arete
“A prima facie obligation is a serious one if, and only if, an act which violates that obligation and fulfils no other is seriously wrong...”
“[A] prima facie obligation is a serious one if, and only if, violation of it will make considerably worse an act which on other grounds is already wrong.”
The two criteria provided by Smith are defective given his use of the biconditional. For this would mean that the analysans of both criteria equivalent. But this is surely mistaken. To remedy this I recommend that we simply revisethe biconditional in both criteria to that of an implicature. Call the first revised criterion “Test-1” and the second “Test-2”. Now, Smith argues that the putative obligation to obey the law fails Test-1:
Let us assume that while driving home at two o’clock in the morning I run a stop sign. There is no danger, for I can see clearly that there was no one approaching the intersection, nor is there any impressionable youth nearby to be inspired to a life of crime by my flouting of the traffic code... [If] my prima facie obligation to obey the law is of substantial moral weight, my action must have been a fairly serious instance of wrongdoing. But clearly it was not (Ibid.: 94).
Smith then goes on to argue that the putative obligation to obey the law also fails Test-2:
[W]e may observe that acts which are otherwise wrong are not made more so—if they are made worse at all—by being illegal. If I defraud someone my act is hardly worse morally by being illegal than it would have been were it protected by some legal loophole. (Ibid.: 94).
Given that the putative moral obligation to obey the law flunks both tests, Smith then concludes that “if there is a prima facie obligation to obey the law, it is at most of trifling weight”. To be sure, Smith’s remarks can be read as suggesting that although the obligation to obey the law is not a moral obligation (since it is of “trifling weight”), it may nonetheless be a prudential obligation.10 While I disagree with the former claim (see below) I can fully accept the latter claim. There may be purely prudential considerations for obeying the law, but this is not inconsistent with our also possessing a moral obligation to obey the law qua law. 11 Let me first consider Smith’s argument to the effect that an obligation to obey the law fails Test-1. According to the first passage quoted from Smith, the agent infers that since her act of flouting a traffic regulation is not serious moral wrongdoing, the obligation to obey traffic regulations must not be a moral one. Now while it does seem that running the red-light at two in the morning is not an instance of serious moral wrongdoing, why should this imply that there is
10 This sentence may suggest the claim that all prudential obligations are in some sense trivial. This claim is highly implausible because there also exist non-trivial prudential obligations. For instance, considerations of prudence suggest that I ought not to drink the bottle of rat poison in front of me; but surely such a consideration is far from trivial! 11 It is of course an open question as to what my specific motivation(s) is for obeying the law. See my discussion in section 2.1.
10 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University no general moral obligation to obey traffic rules? The consequences of my disposing a leaky lithium battery into a river may be meagre, but this wouldn’t be true if everyone did the same. So it seems that whether or not some putative obligation is a moral one does not imply the claim that a single violation of it constitutes serious moral wrongdoing.12 In other words, the motivations leading us to class an obligation as a moral obligation is not wholly exhausted by our considerations of how serious a single transgression of that putative obligation is. But insofar as Smith’s Test-1 assumes otherwise, it fails to provide us with the correct criterion for when some putative obligation is a moral obligation. I now turn to Smith’s second argument against the existence of a moral obligation to obey the law. Recall Smith’s Test-2, which roughly holds that an obligation is a moral one only if “violation of it will make considerably worse an act which on other grounds is already wrong”. Test-2, I believe, also fails to provide us with the correct criterion for when some putative obligation is a moral obligation. In the second passage quoted from Smith, Smith’s agent regards her fraudulent act as being “hardly worse morally by being illegal than it would have been were it protected by some legal loophole”. Therefore, given Test-2, the legal obligation to not defraud others cannot possibly be a moral obligation (even though fraudulent acts in general are morally wrongful). Admittedly, I too share the intuition that illegality doesn’t seem to add anything relevant to our moral deliberations over whether we ought to do a morally wrong act. However, this in no way precludes the claim that illegality makes a difference to our practical deliberations when an act is not otherwise morally wrong. But the analysans of Smith’s Test-2, which only entertains morally wrong acts, seems to crowd out acts that only violate the law and not any other requirements of morality. But since the issue—i.e. of whether acts which violate the obligation to obey the law are morally wrong acts—is the very claim that Smith wishes to deny, Test-2 has tilted the playing field against those of the opinion that acts of legal violation are also acts of (prima facie) wrongdoing. The same point can be made in another way. Many acts which are morally wrong are wrong simply in virtue of having flouted a moral obligation, and not wrong in virtue of having flouted numerous moral obligations. Here’s an example: when I deceive you by getting you to believe a false yet inconsequential proposition—say, that my late grandfather loved the colour red—such that your believing such a proposition would not in any way undermine your interests, my act of deception is simply wrong in virtue of having transgressed a moral obligation, namely the obligation not to tell lies. Now, analogously, some of our legal transgressions are morally wrong simply in virtue of our having flouted the, and only the, moral obligation to obey those legal requirements. An example here might be a case where I fail to pay my parking charges in full. Now when Smith’s Test-2 seems to say “Look, since your act of fraud is not made morally worse by also breaking the law, legal obligations cannot be moral obligations,” what Smith has surreptitiously assumed here is the claim that all of our legal transgressions must already be wrong in virtue of having flouted some relevant moral obligation. But this supposition, as I’ve remarked, is clearly false: some acts are morally wrong simply by being legal transgressions; and denying this claim is simply to beg the question. In sum, both of Smith’s arguments against the existence of a moral obligation to obey the law remain unconvincing.
§1.4
12 Now even if my intentional disposing of a single leaky battery into the river is a morally unworthy action, this is no way entails that I am to be blamed should others follow suit.
11 Arete
A. John Simmons (1979) argues that we do not have a moral obligation to obey the law. He begins his discussion by first distinguishing the notion of a “positional duty” from that of a “moral duty” or “natural duty”. Positional duties, for Simmons, generate:
[T]asks or performances which are intimately connected with some particular office, station, or role which an individual can fill. This role may be part of an institutional framework, but need not be. Thus, we speak of the duties of the citizen, a teacher, or the president, but also the duties of the father (Ibid.: 12).
“Moral duties,” or “natural duties”, on the other hand, are simply duties “independent of any institutional setting or special role which the duty-bound individual is supposed to be playing” (Ibid.: 12). The duty to obey the law, according to Simmons, consists in our specific legal duties as well as those duties conferred upon by our status as citizens of a state. Insofar as both kinds of duties are positional duties, the duty to obey the law is a positional duty (Ibid.: 16). Finally, Simmons argues that positional duties are not sufficient in and of themselves to generate moral requirements. One of the examples Simmons uses to support his claim is that of an army medic who, with a tent full of wounded patients, wanders off to spend the afternoon in a Saigon bar. Additionally, Simmons informs us that this medic was conscripted into the service against his will. While Simmons agrees that the army medic’s behaviour violates both his moral as well as his positional duties, Simmons believes, however, that the duties are independent of each other:
In this case, the army medic has a moral duty to perform the same acts he has a positional duty to perform. But this former duty [i.e. the moral duty] is not a duty “to perform his positional duties.” For anyone, not just an army medic, has precisely the same duty to help those in need... The [moral] duty here is completely independent of the position and the scheme or institution which defines it. The existence of the positional duty in no way establishes the moral requirement, but rather only happens to coincide with it (Ibid.: 19-20).
With that, Simmons concludes that the duty to obey the law, insofar as it is a positional duty, “do[es] not have any moral weight,” and “impose[s] no moral constraints on my action” (Ibid.: 17). I understand Simmons to be making the following claims:
(Claim-1) There is a conceptual distinction between a positional duty and a moral duty.
(Claim-2) The obligation to obey the law is a positional duty.
(Claim-3) Positional duties do not constitute nor do they entail moral duties.
Simmons’ argument for Claim-1 is unconvincing. Simmons claims that a positional duty is one defined by “a role which an individual can fill,” that may or may not be provided by some
12 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University institutional setting. An example Simmons gives of a role not provided for by an institutional setting is that of the “duties of a father”. Now this set of supposedly non-institutional positional duties seem to bear striking resemblance to what we would intuitively deem as moral duties. Take the example of a pet-owner who goes on a holiday such that her pet starves at home. Here, I find myself more inclined to judge her action based on moral grounds, rather than on the fact that she has not fulfilled her non-institutional positional duty of “being a responsible pet- owner”. Of course I might blame her by remarking that pet-owners ought not to behave as irresponsibly as she had; but what seems to be doing the work here is the judgment that “she ought to dispose of her duties as a pet-owner responsibly”. This seems to be a moral judgment. Now, recall Simmons puzzlement over why the army medic should have a moral duty “to perform his positional duties”. If my example of the irresponsible pet-owner is at all plausible, there ought to be nothing puzzling about having moral duties to perform positional duties. We make judgments to that effect all the time. But Simmons might reply that I’ve under-appreciated the nature of his thought-experiment. The army medic, Simmons reminds us, was conscripted against his will. The inclusion of this detail would seem to imply that we should not think that the medic has a moral duty to perform his positional duties. It would seem that if the army medic was forcibly conscripted, then there is no justification in requiring him to perform the positional duties of an army medic. If so, then the nominal army medic does not violate his positional duty to tend to the sickly when he decides to spend the afternoon at a bar instead. This is so because he—the particular medic in question—does not have such a positional duty to begin with. He is only an army medic in the trivial sense of nominally occupying such a position. To be sure, the ‘medic’ might do wrong if he could very easily have saved a patient’s life, but chose not to. (This intuition is often fleshed out by so-called “duties of easy-rescue”). Now even if we believe that the medic has a duty to aid his patients when doing so requires little effort, this belief is nonetheless consistent with our earlier claim that the medic (qua conscript) does not have a moral duty to perform all his positional duties. I have tried to show that the conceptual distinction Simmons draws between non- institutional positional duties and moral duties is theoretically, if not practically, unhelpful. Yet Simmons might concede this, and argue that I’ve not hit the heart of his argument since the distinction between institutional positional duties and moral duties remains sound. But is it? A lot depends, I think, on what Simmons’ actually means by the term “institutional”. Unfortunately, Simmons’ comments on this matter are scant. Regardless, I do believe that we’ve certain fixed intuitions about the concept of an “institution” to guide us along. Here I have gathered a few (c.f. Scruton 2007: 333ff.):
1. It is an abstract, non-propositional object. 2. It contains members (or contains a member), but is not identical to them (her). 3. It may or may not possess agency, that is, the ability to form decisions, intentions, etc., and to act on these. If it possesses agency, then it may or may not have rights and obligations. 4. It endures beyond the life of its particular members. 5. Its members are usually governed by rules, laws, conventions, etc. 6. The clearest manifestation of an institution is through the intentional actions of its members as governed by those institutional rules, laws, etc.
13 Arete
This list is certainly non-exhaustive, but I'm fairly confident that whatever else an institution may possess, it should have the properties I’ve listed. The point of this slight detour is this: it seems that given features 1 through 6, morality itself can be considered an institution in its own right. Indeed, philosophers such as Bernard Williams (1985) and Thomas Scanlon (1998) often speak of the “institution of morality”. All this, I think, should not be surprising. But if we accept that morality itself can suffice as an institution, then it seems arbitrary for Simmons to draw the line between institutional positional duties on the one hand, and moral duties on the other. Yet Simmons might reply that we often speak of encountering conflicts between, say, our legal or religious duties as opposed to our moral duties. And this is strong evidence that there is normative import between our institutional positional duties and our moral duties. But the potential objection assumes that our moral duties cannot conflict amongst themselves; but this seems false. Indeed I would venture to assert that a putative conflict between a legal duty and a moral one is simply a conflict within morality.13 My objections to Simmons’ claim that there is a conceptual distinction between a positional duty and a moral duty is this: either a positional duty is an institutional positional duty or a non-institutional positional duty. If we take the former, then the distinction between an institutional positional duty and a moral duty rests on arbitrary grounds. If we take the latter, then there exists little normative difference between a non-institutional positional duty and a moral duty. Now, since Simmons fails to draw a coherent distinction between positional and moral duties, his argument cannot even get started.
§2 §2.1 In the preceding section, I presented and objected to the numerous arguments in favour of the Denial Thesis, which denies that we have a moral obligation to obey the law. Throughout the rest of this article, I will focus on the Legitimacy Thesis, which holds that states with legitimate political authority are those whose subjects have a corresponding moral obligation to obey the law. The first argument for such a thesis, or what I’ve called the Instrumental Argument, may be reconstructed as follows:
P1. It is an essential function of the law that it regulates human behaviour.
P2. If it is an essential function of the law that it regulates human behaviour, then a state, X, which possesses legitimate political authority, must be successful at regulating human behaviour, whatever else X may possess. P3. So, a state, X, which possesses legitimate political authority, must be successful at regulating human behaviour. [P1;P2]. P4. If a state, X, which possesses legitimate political authority, must be successful at regulating human behaviour, then X has legitimate political authority only if those subjected to its jurisdiction have a moral obligation to obey the law. P5. So, X has legitimate political authority only if those subjected to its jurisdiction have a moral obligation to obey the law [P3;P4]. As I think that above argument for the Legitimacy Thesis is fundamentally misguided, my critique of it will be brief. P4, I believe, is simply false, because it confuses the notion of a “duty
13 This claim is, of course, much in keeping with the position I am endeavouring to defend in this section of the paper, namely, that we do have a moral obligation to obey the law.
14 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University to comply with the law” for the notion of a “duty to obey the law”. Unlike the latter duty, my duty to comply with the law need not evoke the notion of a moral obligation to obey the law. This is so because I may comply with the law on the grounds of prudence (that it is likely that I would be punished for non-compliance), or on religious grounds (that God frowns upon those who live in discord with their brethren), or even on other moral grounds which do not depend on the idea of a moral obligation to obey the law (that the law codifies sound moral principles that prohibit killing, theft, etc.). At this juncture one may fault my introduction of the above distinction for being merely an ad-hoc attempt at undermining the instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis. In order to pre-empt such a potential objection I recommend the following definitions to make the distinction between “complying with the law” as opposed to “obeying the law” in more principled grounds: S complies with the law =def S’s actions are not in contravention to legal norms. S obeys the law =def (i) S’s actions are not in contravention to legal norms; and (ii) clause (i) is explained by that fact that S believes that she ought to obey the law because it is the law. Given the preceding definitions, all instances of obedience to the law are instances of compliance; the converse, however, does not hold. More importantly, that the general populace of a state complies with the law on religious or prudential grounds is more than sufficient for such a state to be in fact successful at regulating human behaviour. And since not all instances of compliance are instances of obedience, therefore the explanation why some state is successful in regulating its citizenry’s behaviour need not necessarily evoke something as strong as its citizens having to possess a moral obligation to obey the law. For example, a state with a disproportionately harsh system of punitive laws may successfully regulate its citizenry’s behaviour without inspiring in them a moral obligation to obey its laws. P4, therefore, is unsound. The instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis is, then, indefensible.
§2.2 In this section, I intend to construct and critique what I’ve called the non-instrumental version of the argument for the Legitimacy Thesis. In constructing this argument, I intend to draw support from the extensive work done by Joseph Raz on the nature of authority. Most of the pertinent premises of the non-instrumental argument are Raz’s; where premises are lacking in order to render the argument valid, I will fill in such gaps accordingly. Given the sophistication of Raz’s analysis, I have decided to present his argument in sections with the sole intent of making clear its pertinent stages. This runs as follows: (1) The “Authority Thesis” states a conceptual truth about the law: it holds that, necessarily, every legal system “claims” that it possesses legitimate political authority, that is, it claims to possess the right to morally obligate those over whom it holds authority (Raz 1994: 215; 2004: 6). If the legal institution claims to possess the right to morally oblige those over whom it holds authority, and if it is in fact justified in having such a right (see Point 2, below), then those within a legal system’s jurisdiction must have a moral obligation to obey the law. Now what exactly does it mean for the law to “claim” legitimate political authority? Raz’s remarks on this matter are helpful:
The claims the law makes for itself are evident from the language it adopts and from the opinions expressed by its spokesman, i.e. by the institutions of the law. The law’s claim to authority is manifested by the fact that legal institutions are officially
15 Arete
designated as ‘authorities,’ by the fact that they regard themselves as having the right to impose obligations on their subjects, by their claims that their subjects owe them allegiance, and that their subjects ought to obey the law as it requires to be obeyed... (Raz 1994: 199-200)
It is crucial to note that the Authority Thesis also applies to de facto political authorities, that is, authorities that do not necessarily possess moral legitimacy (Ibid.: 195). (2) Further, Raz writes, “the fact that the law claims authority for itself shows that it is capable of having authority” (1994: 201, emphasis added). To be “capable” of having authority, the law must function like an arbitrator for its subjects by issuing reasons for action. It must, in other words, carry out the mediating role that we expect from any practical authority (of which the law is but one species). Crucially, whether a de facto political authority is in fact a legitimate political authority (i.e. a de jure political authority) depends on how successfully such an authority carries out its role as an arbitrator for its subjects. The criterion of success is evoked by what Raz’s calls the “Service Conception of Authority,” which spells out the necessary and sufficient conditions satisfaction of which a de facto political authority suffices as a legitimate political authority.
(3) The Service Conception of Authority is constituted by the following two theses:
(The Normal Justification Thesis) The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another person involves showing that the alleged subject is likely to better comply with reasons which apply to her if she accepts the directives of the alleged authority as authoritatively binding and tries to follow them, rather than by trying to follow the reasons which apply to her directly (Raz 1986: 53).
(The Dependence Thesis) All authoritative directives should be based on reasons which already independently apply to the subjects of the directives and are relevant to their action in the circumstances covered by the directive (Ibid.: 47).
According to the “Normal Justification Thesis,” authorities are legitimate when their subjects are more likely to conform to the balance of reasons that apply to them if they comply with legal directives. There exists, I think, a slight ambiguity in deciphering what Raz means when he speaks of “the balance of reasons”. The “Dependence Thesis,” I believe, clarifies the notion of “reasons” as employed by Raz in his formulation of the Normal Justification Thesis. This thesis holds that legal directives should be based on reasons which “already” apply, and which apply “independently” to its subjects. Raz is here referring to the so-called “agent-neutral” reasons (as opposed to “agent-relative” reasons) famously introduced by Thomas Nagel (1986). Agent- neutral reasons are reasons which do not refer to any particular individual. On this stipulation, a reason such as “To prevent global-warming” would count as an agent-neutral reason. If by “reasons” Raz is referring to agent-neutral reasons, then the locution “the balance of reasons” would simply refer to an all-things-considered agent-neutral reason. On this interpretation, the Normal Justification thesis would hold that the legitimacy of an authority is dependent on how well it gets its subjects to do what is best as prescribed by all-things-considered agent-neutral reasons.
16 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
(4) Raz believes that the Normal Justification Thesis and the Dependence Thesis imply the following:
(The Pre-emptive Thesis) The fact that an authority requires performance of an action is a reason for its performance which is not to be added to all other relevant reasons when assessing what to do, but should exclude and take the place of some of them (Ibid.: 46).
The “Pre-emptive Thesis,” I believe, says that authoritative reasons, unlike ordinary reasons, are (i) not only reasons for a subject to act according to its contents, but also (ii) reasons that substitute other reasons for action. Raz illustrates the workings of the Pre-emptive Thesis using the example of the process of arbitration (Ibid.: 41-42). The arbitrator’s final decision is meant to be a product of all the relevant considerations of the case at hand. Subjects to the arbitration, then, are to accept the final decision insofar as this decision reflects the considerations of the case. If subjects were to deliberate about the merits of the case themselves, there would be no need for arbitration. With that, we may now construct the non-instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis:
P1. Necessarily, the law claims legitimate political authority.
P2. If the law claims legitimate political authority, then it is a function of the law that it serves as a practical arbitrator for its subjects.
P3. If it is function of the law that it serves as a practical arbitrator for its subjects, then a state, X, possesses legitimate political authority only if X satisfies the Normal Justification Thesis and the Dependence Thesis.
P4. If a state, X, satisfies the Normal Justification Thesis and the Dependence Thesis, then the legal demands of X reflect the balance of reasons that apply to the subjects of X.
The foregoing premises are Raz’s. To get a valid argument for the Legitimacy Thesis, I propose the following (c.f. Feldman 1986):
P5. We are obligated to do what is best. What is best is provided by the balance of reasons that apply to us.
Premises P2 through P5 entails:
P6. So, if the law claims legitimate political authority, then a state, X, possesses legitimate political authority only if X’s subjects have a moral obligation to obey the law.
17 Arete
Finally, P1 and P6 give us:
P7. So, a state, X, possesses legitimate political authority only if X’s subjects have a moral obligation to obey the law.
Clearly, P7 is a restatement of the Legitimacy Thesis. If the foregoing analysis is cogent, we will have a very lucid argument demonstrating it’s soundness.
Since I’ve assumed P5, I'm disallowed from objecting to it, as well as the conclusions which follow from it, namely P6 and P7. For now, let us focus on the consequent of P3:
(P3-Consequent) A state, X, possesses legitimate political authority only if X satisfies the Normal Justification Thesis and the Dependence Thesis.
Schematically, the conjunction of the Normal Justification Thesis and the Dependence Thesis may be rendered as follows:
A’s authority over B with respect to domain D is justified if B is more likely to act correctly in D by complying with A’s directives, than if B were to act by reasoning on her own; an agent acts correctly iff she acts in accordance with the balance of right reasons that apply to her.
To see how P3-Consequent is problematic, consider the following scenario. Suppose that D refers to the domain of Travis’ sexual behaviour. Suppose also that Travis is presently committing adultery, and the state that Travis resides in has a law which criminalises adultery. Clearly, Travis would be more likely to act correctly by complying with such a law since the balance of right reasons would more likely counsel against his adulterous liaisons. So given P3- Consequent, a necessary condition for the legitimacy of Travis’ state is that it has laws that illegalize adultery. But this seems counterintuitive. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true. That is, we would normally judge a certain state to be illegitimate when it unnecessarily pries into our private lives (c.f. Copp 1999: 19). To the foregoing it might be objected that even if Travis’ state is illegitimate with respect to the specific domain that is its citizenry’s sexual behaviour, the state may nonetheless be all-things-considered legitimate. More generally, a state’s (all-things- considered) legitimacy need not be held hostage by specific occasions where it acts illegitimately. In reply, I would suggest that the foregoing claim is plausible but only with an important qualification. That is, it is implausible to suggest that a state’s (all-things-considered) legitimacy may tolerate occasional instances of specific illegitimacy, period. This is because we would not normally judge a state to be legitimate when it commits, say, occasional acts of genocide. Rather, it is more plausible to suggest that a state’s (all-things-considered) legitimacy may tolerate occasional instances of specific illegitimacy where those instances are few and far between and where the domain to which those instances belong is relatively unimportant. Admittedly, there is no hard and fast rule for determining whether a specific domain is a
18 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University relatively unimportant one. But surely the domain that is a citizenry’s sexual behaviour cannot be a relatively unimportant one. And for Travis’ state to take a curious interest in regulating Travis’ behaviour in this domain surely counts against the state’s legitimacy. I am therefore inclined to think that P3-Consequent is problematic. In the foregoing paragraph, I have assumed that the balance of right reasons, or an all-things-considered agent-neutral reason, would not permit adultery.14 An objector might resist this assumption. She might argue that while an all-things- considered agent-neutral moral reason would disallow adultery, however, an all-things- considered agent-neutral reason would allow adultery. This is because agents might have a non- moral agent-neutral reason for everyone’s preferences to be satisfied. And since everyone would have a preference not to live in a state that criminalises adultery, an all-things-considered agent- neutral reason will permit adultery. The moral agent-neutral reason that disallows adultery would be trumped by the non-moral agent-neutral reason that everyone’s preferences ought to be satisfied. Hence, an all-things-considered agent-neutral reason would permit adultery. Hence a legitimate Razian state would not criminalise adultery, since a law that forbids adultery would not reflect the balance of right reasons, or an all-things-considered agent-neutral reason. This potential objection to my example involving Travis and his state is instructive. For, it shows how ambiguous Raz’s notion of “the balance of right reasons”—or, on my interpretation, an all-things-considered agent-neutral reason—is. Firstly, it remains to be seen whether the agent-neutral/agent-relative reason distinction is coherent. Secondly, even if an incontrovertible distinction between these two types of reasons can be drawn, the question of how one might arrive at an all-things-considered agent-neutral reason still remains unanswered. Do we assign more weight to moral agent-neutral reasons as opposed to non-moral agent-neutral reason, or vice versa? Say we proffer the most plausible normative ethical theory as an answer to the problem of aggregating agent-neutral reasons. If so, then the “balance of right reasons” will presumably track the conclusions of such a normative theory. But if we opt for this route, then it appears that Raz’s Normal Justification Thesis and his Dependence Thesis are rendered redundant. State legitimacy, then, would simply be determined by the normative ethical theory we had adopted. The debate surrounding Raz’s conception of authority is massive; and I cannot even begin to sketch an outline of this debate without running afoul of my present space constraints. Whatever the overall merits of Raz’s conception of authority, it would be wrong-headed to build a non-instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis on Razian foundations. Given the ambiguities surrounding Raz’s claims, an argument for the Legitimacy Thesis based on Razian premises would not look convincing. In any case, my aim in this section is not to discredit Raz’s conception of authority. Rather, I only to wish to suggest that a non-instrumental argument for the Legitimacy Thesis based on Razian premises would be problematic. At this juncture, we may either give up the Legitimacy Thesis, or defend the Razian non-instrumental argument for the thesis. While the former involves a sacrifice, the latter option looks set to be a difficult task. In what follows, I intend to tread a middle path by offering a reformulation of the Legitimacy Thesis. This reformulated thesis, I will demonstrate, not only accounts for the motivation behind the original, but also has the added virtue of not resting on problematic premises.
§2.3
14 I should qualify this statement: I assumed that the balance of reason would not permit adultery in general, and, a fortiori, would not permit Travis’ adulterous behaviour. I am happy to allow that the balance of reasons may permit such behaviour under extenuating circumstances.
19 Arete
The Legitimacy Thesis is often thought to be true because it captures an important intuition: that the laws of states with legitimate political authority possess normative significance. A legitimate political authority, in other words, is thought to be of practical relevance to its subjects. But we seem to be caught in a bind, since, as the preceding subsection demonstrated, it is untenable to cash out the “practical relevance” that a legitimate political authority is thought to possess in terms of a full-blown moral obligation on the part of its subjects to obey its laws. Fortunately, it seems to me that we need not be forced to choose between either accepting the above version of the Legitimacy Thesis or abandoning our intuition altogether.
In place of the Legitimacy Thesis, I recommend the following thesis:
(Respect Thesis) A state, X, has legitimate political authority only if those subjected to its jurisdiction have a moral obligation to respect X. In order to understand the motivations behind the Respect Thesis as well as to grasp what exactly goes into “respecting” a certain entity, let us briefly consider another form of authority, namely, the authority that experts are thought to possess in whatever field they may specialise in. Suppose that Ron is an expert in the nascent field of Scientology, a discourse whose principles I can only characterise as being somewhat far-fetched. Now, while I may be sceptical as to the value of the teachings of Scientology (as a means of furthering the welfare of its followers), the very fact that I justifiably believe Ron to be an expert in this field is a sufficient reason for me to adopt a certain attitude towards Ron. For example, I may not prevent Ron from preaching the teachings of Scientology, nor may I coerce the followers of Ron into abandoning their beliefs. In sum, while I may have a personal quibble with Ron’s religion, insofar as I recognise that he is a legitimate authority in his field, I ought to respect him. More importantly, that I have an obligation to respect Ron is no reason for me to be obliged to accept Ron’s teachings, or to act on any of Ron’s commands. By analogy, that I justifiably believe some state, X, to possess legitimate political authority is a sufficient reason for me to respect X. But what exactly does respecting a state (as opposed to respecting a person) consist in? Its bears noting that a state is merely an abstract entity constituted by its institutions of government; it’s judiciary, legislature, and executive and administrative bureaucracies. Further, these institutions of government are sustained by the many officials that “run the show,” so to speak. So, while I deny that the mere fact that X has legitimate political authority is a sufficient reason for me to obey the legal prescriptions issued by X, I'm certainly obligated, whether directly or indirectly, to not prevent state officials from carrying out their official duties. Also, I would be acting impermissibly should I, whether directly or indirectly, causelessly sow dissent amongst the rule-abiding citizens of state X. While indeed much more can be said about what respect for a legitimate state constitutes, however it should be fairly obvious that a moral obligation to respect a legitimate state is far less compendious than a moral obligation to obey its laws. In this sense, the Respect Thesis is weaker than the Legitimacy Thesis. Finally, there exist two further advantages motivating the Respect Thesis. Firstly, defined as such, this thesis is neutral between so-called theories of political obligation—e.g. theories of natural duties, fair-play, etc—which attempt to account for the more burdensome obligations citizens may owe either to their state or to their fellow countrymen (say, the duty to serve in the army). The beneficial upshot here is that should one be a sceptic about political obligation, one
20 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University need not be forced, as the original Legitimacy Thesis would have it, to abandon the intuition that an ideally legitimate state possesses a right to oblige her citizenry in at least some minimal manner. Secondly, the Respect Thesis helps to elevate the moral standing of justified acts of civil disobedience. Civil disobedients are often demonised by state apologists for having acted “against the interests of the state”. Such unwarranted brow-beating only serves to exaggerate the moral wrongness of one’s legal transgression, and to obscure the fact that disobedients may have an all-things-considered moral justification for having so acted. When one intentionally flouts certain immoral laws, say, segregation laws, in order to bring the issue of the evilness of such laws under public scrutiny, their so doing, according to the Respect Thesis, is fully consistent with the fact that the civil disobedient still retains respect for her state. While the civil disobedient of segregation laws may be flouting an immoral law, she may be entirely willing to be tried in court for her legal transgression. Also, she may be entirely sincere when she claims that others ought not to follow in her footsteps. The civil disobedient, in other words, is unwilling to disrupt state proceedings beyond what’s required to get her message across. More importantly, her act of civil disobedience is fully consistent with the fact that her state still possesses political legitimacy; adherents of the original Legitimacy Thesis, however, would be at great pains to explain how this could be so.
Conclusion The argument for philosophical anarchism runs as follows: (Legitimacy Thesis) A state, X, has legitimate political authority only if those subjected to its jurisdiction have a moral obligation to obey the law. (Denial Thesis) It is not the case that we have a moral obligation to obey the law. (Philosophical Anarchism) So, no actual states have legitimate political authority, nor are such stateseven possible. There are, to wit, two main arguments—i.e. the instrumental and the non-instrumental arguments—for the Legitimacy Thesis; and three arguments for the Denial Thesis. In response to the anarchist, I argued that all the considerations canvassed for both theses cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Further, in place of the Legitimacy Thesis I proposed a weaker principle—i.e. the Respect Thesis—as a means of accounting for the intuition that led to its original formulation. If my arguments thus far have been plausible, we may, then, have good grounds to reject the threat of philosophical anarchism, and to affirm the possibility of legitimate states. If however the arguments marshalled here are thought to be less than fully convincing, I would nonetheless rest content with having brought to the fore a potential argument for philosophical anarchism. A position which many, doubtless, would find disquieting.
21 Arete
Bibliography Aiyar, S. (2000) “The Problem of Law’s Authority: John Finnis and Joseph Raz on Legal Obligation,” Law and Philosophy, v. 19, no. 4 (July 2000) p. 465 -– 89.
Anscombe, G.E.M. ([1978]1990) “On the Source of the Authority of the State,” re-printed in Joseph Raz (ed.) Authority, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.), pp. 142 – 173. Buchanan, Allen (2002) “Political Legitimacy and Democracy,” Ethics, Vol. 112, No.4, pp. 689 - &19. ——— (2004) Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Carnes, John R. (1960) “Why Should I Obey the Law?” Ethics, Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 14 – 26. Christie, George C. (1990) “On the Moral Obligation to Obey the Law,” Duke Law Journal, pp. 1311 – 1336. Copp, David (1999) “The Idea of a Legitimate State,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 3 – 45. Coleman, Jules L. (1989) “On the Relationship Between Law and Morality,” Ratio Juris, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 66 – 78. Durning, Patrick (2003) “Political Legitimacy and the Duty to Obey the Law,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 373 – 390. Edmundson, William A. (2004) “State of the Art: The Duty to Obey the Law,” 10 Legal Theory, pp. 215 – 259. (1999) “Introduction,” in William A. Edmundson (ed.) The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings, (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), pp. 1 – 15. Feldman, Fred (1986) Doing the Best We Can, (Dordrecht: D. Reidel). Finnis, John (1980) Natural Law and Natural Rights, (Oxford: Clarendon Press). ——— (1985) “The Authority Of Law in the Predicament of Contemporary Social Theory,” 1 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy, pp. 115 – 137. ——— (1989) “Law as Co-ordination,” Ratio Juris, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 97 – 104. Flathman, Richard E. (1993) “Legitimacy,” in Robert E Goodin and Philip Petit (eds.) A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.), pp. 527 – 533. Fried, Charles (1978) Right and Wrong, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Friedman, R.B. ([1973]1990) “On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy,” re-printed in Joseph Raz (ed.) Authority, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.), pp. 56 – 91. Fuller, Lon L. (1969) The Morality of Law, revised edn., (New Haven: Yale University Press). Green, Leslie ([1996]1999) “Who Believes in Political Obligation?” reprinted in William A. Edmundson (ed.) The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings, (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), pp. 301 – 317. ——— (2008) "Legal Obligation and Authority," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2008 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
22 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Greenawalt, Kent (1987) Conflicts of Law and Morality, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Inc.). Harris, Paul (1990) “The Moral Obligation to Obey the Law,” in Paul Harris (ed.) On Political Obligation, (London; N.Y.: Routledge), pp. 151 – 183. Hart, H.L.A. (1994) The Concept of Law, 2nd edn., (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Himma, Kenneth Einar (1998) “Positivism, Naturalism and the Obligation to Obey Law,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 145 – 162. ——— (2001) “Law’s Claim of Legitimate Authority,” in Jules L. Coleman (ed.) Hart’s Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to the Concept of Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 271 – 309. ——— (2002) “Inclusive Legal Positivism,” in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 125 – 165. ——— (2007) “Revisiting Raz: Inclusive Positivism and the Concept of Authority,” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 20 – 27. Hohfeld, W.N. (1917) “Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,” The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 26, No. 8, pp. 710 – 770. Holmes, Robert L. (1981) “State-Legitimacy and the Obligation to Obey the Law,” 67 Virginia Law Review, pp. 133 – 141. Kagan, Shelly (1989) The Limits of Morality, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Klosko, George (2005) Political Obligations, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ladenson, Robert F. (1972) “Legitimate Authority,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 335 – 341. Marmor, Andrei (2001) "The Nature of Law," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2008 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
23 Arete
——— (1990b) Practical Reason and Norms, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press). ——— (1994) Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). ——— (2004) “Incorporation By Law,” Legal Theory, Vol. 10, Is. 1, pp. 1 – 17. Regan, Donald H. (1986) “Law’s Halo,” Social Philosophy and Policy 4, pp. 15 – 30. Sartorius, Rolf (1981) “Political Authority and Political Obligation,” Virginia Law Review, Vol. 67, No. 1, pp. 3 – 17. Scanlon, T.M. (1998) What We Owe to Each Other, (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press). Scruton, Roger (2007) The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought, 3rd edn., (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Shapiro, Scott J. (2001) “On Hart’s Way Out,” in Jules Coleman (ed.) Hart’s Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to the Concept of Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 149 – 191. Simmons, A. John (1979) Moral Principles and Political Obligation, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press). ——— (2001) Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Smith, M.B.E. ([1973]1999) “Is There a Prima Facie Obligation to Obey the Law?” reprinted in William A. Edmundson (ed.) The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings, (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), pp. 75 – 105. Soper, Philip (1984) “Legal Theory and the Obligation to Obey,” Georgia Law Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 891 – 909. ——— (2002) The Ethics of Deference: Learning From Law’s Morals, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tyler, Tom R. (1990) Why People Obey the Law, (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press). Wasserstrom, Richard A. ([1963]1968) “The Obligation to Obey the Law,” reprinted in Robert S. Summers (ed.) Essays in Legal Philosophy, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 274 – 304. Weber, Max ([1948]1958) “Bureaucracy,” re-printed in Hans Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds. & trans.) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 196 – 245. Williams, Bernard (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, (London; N.Y.: Routledge).
24 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
25 Arete
The Demise of Neutral Monism Due to the Simplicity Intuition
Neutral monism is the view that there is only one fundamental substance, neither physical nor mental, but neutral in nature. On this view, the world's neutral state determines both its mental and physical state. A central motivation for neutral monism is that it purports to provide for a solution to the mind-body problem. According to this solution, aggregates of neutral substance are conscious. A second motivation for neutral monism is that it purports to provide an explanation of the behavior of elementary particles. By this explanation, the neutral essences of elementary particles determine their physical behavior. It is my aim to show that neutral monism is false. My argument has two parts. First I will undermine the central motivation for neutral monism. I will do this by arguing that conscious beings are simple, that is to say, they are not composed of other things. Because conscious beings are simple, aggregates of neutral substance cannot themselves be conscious. And so, the neutral monist's solution to the mind- body problem is undermined. Second, I will show that only physical essences are a plausible candidate to explain the physical behavior of elementary particles. In section (1), I will explain the theory of neutral monism. In section (2), I will explore three conundrums presented by neutral monism. In section (3), I will defend the theory of our simplicity intuition applied to conscious beings. I will demonstrate how the theory of simplicity is in fact a sufficient counter argument to neutral monism. In section (4), I will explore superior objections to the simplicity intuition argument. In section (5), I will summarize David Chalmers mistake of surrendering to neutral monism, in his book The Conscious Mind. I will also discuss the general philosophical implications of surrendering to neutral monism. In section (6), I will explain that physical essences are the only plausible candidate to explain the behavior of these elementary particles, which neutral substance is theorized to govern. For all of its value, I believe Chalmers’ argument for neutral monism is constructed from weak premises and is unsound. In the interest of brevity, it is not my intention to support any justified solution to the mind body problem. I only mean to prove neutral monism false. In the end, I will touch on materialism, in comparison to the failed neutral monism. This paper will strictly focus on neutral monism and simplicity.
(1) Neutral Monism
Neutral monism classifies as a monistic metaphysical theory. Proponents deal the substance monistic argument in a drove of variety. What characteristic all variations hold in common is the concept of singularity: there exists one fundamental substance which underlies all concrete objects (physical and mental). Substance monism can be divided into the 3 kind, idealism: the one fundamental substance is strictly mental, materialism: the one fundamental substance is physical, and neutral monism. These different variations of substance monism arrive at conflict when determining what realm of existence constitutes this fundamental substance. The majority of neutral monist proponents believe that all physical and mental properties are created from and reduced to this fundamental neutral substance. This substance is believed to be neither physical nor mental thus conveying the idea of neutrality. I will be addressing a form of neutral monism which states that this neutral property constructs the intrinsic nature of the elementary subatomic particles that constitute our physical existence. When aggregated in specific states these same particle features supposedly possess consciousness. To understand this neutral monism we must know (1) the intrinsic nature of the neutral reality, (2) the correlating
26 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University bond between the perceived physical state and the neutral property, and (3) the correlating bond between the phenomenal experience (mental) and the neutral property. Proponents of neutral monism have the tendency to call the reality between mind and matter “neutral stuff”. We do not know the intrinsic nature of this neutral property; however, this neutral property is theorized to govern certain fundamental particles in our physical world.
(1) To understand the nature of the neutral state we must understand the modern physical science’s outlook on elementary subatomic particles. Neutral monism thrives on our current limitation of knowledge in quantum mechanics. With current technology, we have yet to discover the intrinsic nature of subatomic particles, such as quarks and leptons. We have the ability to observe these particle’s actions and their governing features. We can measure mass, movements, quantum tunneling, electrical charge, and spin. We can observe how these particles react with other particles and construct mathematical formulas to predict certain future behavioral features. However, we do not currently know the intrinsic nature of these particles. By this I mean to say that we do not know the nature of the governing features (spin, charge, etc). Quarks and leptons are classified as elementary particles: particles that possess no substructure, and are the smallest things known to man. These particles construct larger particles such as protons, neutrons, etc. These larger particles then turn to construct atoms, which construct our physical state. Bertrand Russell, who was a proponent of neutral monism said, “Its (elementary subatomic properties) relation to the object (elementary subatomic particles) is causal and mathematical; we cannot say whether or not it resembles the object in any intrinsic respect, except that both it and the object are brief events in space-time”. When asked what “charge” is, a quantum physicist will state “it is a property carried by certain elementary particles”. When asked what controls the elementary particle’s charge, physicists will shrug their heads and hand you a calculation trying to predict a specific particle’s future actions based on the observed charge. Proponents of neutral monism say that the neutral reality governs these particles and constitutes their intrinsic nature. Neutral monist proponents believe the neutral substance is responsible for a quarks charge, spin, etc. Chalmers (proponent of neutral monism) uses the term “protophenomenal property” when referring to the governing neutral substance. I will follow Chalmers and use this term protophenomenal property, for I believe it accurately reflects the definition of the neutral property. (2) The intrinsic relationship of our perceived physical state and protophenomenal property is complex. The perceived physical reality exists as a constructed entity of the protophenomenal state. Because the protophenomenal property would govern the state of these fundamental particles (quarks and leptons), it would in turn control the larger particles which these particles construct (protons, neutrons, etc), and in turn control entire atoms themselves, which compose and govern the physical nature of all objects. The physical world would hold no existence or action in absence of the protophenomenal substance. The state of the protophenomenal substance qualitatively determines the state of the physical world. Physical properties would logically supervene on protophenomenal properties. Our entire physical existence would directly supervene from a qualitatively specific protophenomenal property. (3) Protophenomenal substance holds a constructing relation to phenomenal consciousness as well. When qualitatively specific aggregates of protophenomenal substance are composed, they possess an extrinsic feature of consciousness (e.g. conscious cognitive matter).
27 Arete
Certain protophenomenal properties possess conscious experience, theoretically depending on their arrangement and relation to each other. Phenomenal consciousness logically supervenes from the neutral state. All mental sensation and experience is ultimately composed from different protophenomenal property conglomerations. The phenomenal consciousness is strictly an experience receptor for certain neutral states. Not all protophenomenal states need phenomenal consciousness. Theoretically, an aggregate of protophenomenal properties that construct a table would most likely not possess consciousness. An aggregate of protophenomenal properties that construct a human brain would have the feature of consciousness. An example for clarity, so we may view the relation between the neutral, mental, and physical. “I see red”. This sensation «red» is a creation of my protophenomenal state. Certain protophenomenal properties conglomerated in a qualitatively specific structure. This conglomeration constructs a physical state of a certain “red” property. This physical state of «red» was simply projected through the certain configuration of multiple subatomic particles. Because the mental state simultaneously supervenes from the protophenomenal state, I have this phenomenal experience of red, however it is just a feature of my protophenomenal state, imaging itself into my perceived consciousness. On the next page I have created a simplified diagram, which illustrates the process occurring in a human brain under the governance of the neutral monist theory. Some possible protophenomenal states are in the middle column. Each one of these qualitatively different protophenomenal states gives rise to a corresponding physical state (right column) and phenomenal experience (left column) simultaneously.
Neutral Monism Process
PHYSICAL PROTOPHENOMENAL PHENOMENAL
0 1 0 0 0 0 Quark/Lepton Property Green Experience 0 0 0 0 1 0 # 2739581309849374 -Top right 0 0 1 0 0 0 -Causes certain green belief visual field 1 0 0 0 0 0 in top right visual field
0 0 1 0 0 0 Quark/ Lepton Property Cold Experience 1 0 0 0 1 0 #23987530298745937 -Left index finger 0 0 0 0 0 0 -Causes belief of cold temperature 0 1 0 0 0 0 in left index finger
1 0 0 0 0 0 Quark/ Lepton Property Scent of Roses 0 0 1 0 0 0 #32098459028632908 -Nasal Apparatus 0 1 0 0 1 0 -Causes smell belief of red roses 1 1 1 0 0 0 through nasal apparatus
Neutral monism is carried out by a theorized set of governing protophenomenal laws. Because we have a completely different state of reality (neutral), new governing laws must exist
28 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University for this neutral state. This neutral reality will require laws of a different nature to govern the physical (quarks/leptons), as well as the mental (phenomenal experience). The three illustrated protophenomenal states are categorized by number. This number represents the qualitative state of all protophenomenal properties in the brain at that instance. This state in turn governs the qualitative state of all quarks and leptons in the brain. The numbers are very large because there are a large amount of possible qualitative states that the protophenomenal properties could possibly form. We can imagine a trillion qualitatively different sensations of just the color “red” that a conscious individual could experience. Now imagine every single different sensation that a conscious being could experience. The “physical” column illustrates the different particle configurations created from the neutral property. The matrix shows 24 elementary particles (obviously the human brain possesses a much larger quantity of quarks and leptons), and each elementary particle is represented by a 1 or 0. The 1 represents a particle with positive charge, and the 0 representing a particle with negative charge. Obviously elementary particles are under governance of many more properties then just charge, but for our simple purposes I will differentiate between particles with only a charge feature. Remember that charge is simply a form of governance which the protophenomenal property uses to create specific physical states. The phenomenal column illustrates the corresponding sensation, simultaneously experienced by the conscious subject, during each neutral monism process.
(2) Conundrums Presented by Neutral Monism
I will explore three puzzles that neutral monism presents. The first puzzle comes from our lack of sufficient detection method for the theorized “neutral substance”. We cannot know if the neutral monism theory is correct, for we have no process to discover this supposed protophenomenal state with current scientific technology or cognitive theory. This would in turn create the problem of detecting phenomenal consciousness, because protophenomenal substance would ultimately determine the phenomenal consciousness. The second puzzle arises because there is a theoretically vast number of qualitatively different states that aggregated protophenomenal features could compose. There is an epistemic possibility that a specific protophenomenal state can give rise to a corresponding specific physical state, and not possess a corresponding conscious experience to accompany that specific physical state. I mean to say, it would be possible for unconscious zombies to exist. We would have no method of recognizing their lack of phenomenal consciousness. This is because we have no scientific method or cognitive study for detecting consciousness. The third puzzle is created from our knowledge gap of the theorized protophenomenal laws. There is a possibility that multiple protophenomenal states which are qualitatively different, could give rise to the qualitatively same physical state. We would have no way of knowing which one of those variously distinct protophenomenal states was constructing that particular physical state. Since we cannot detect the protophenomenal feature or the phenomenal feature we would also be unaware as to which of those variously distinct protophenomenal states gives rise to the correlating phenomenal experience. This third puzzle presents a scenario in which it would be impossible for there to be zombies physically identical to us. If the zombies possess our identical physical state, that means that they either possess our identical protophenomenal state, or a different protophenomenal state
29 Arete that gives rise to the same physical state. If the zombie possesses our identical protophenomenal state, we can be sure they are not zombies because that state necessarily gives rise to conscious experience (since we are in that qualitative physical state, and can know that we are experiencing phenomenal consciousness). However, the protophenomenal state might be non-identical to our protophenomenal state. The zombie's protophenomenal state may or may not give rise to a correlating consciousness. In this case it would be impossible to know whether the zombies were experiencing consciousness or not. Below I have illustrated this third puzzle. You can see 3 qualitatively different protophenomenal states. We are undergoing Protophenomenal State 2. We know this because we are conscious and Protophenomenal State 2 is the only state which possesses consciousness. All 3 of these states give rise to an identical physical state. Protophenomenal State 1 Phen. State 1 Physical State 1 Correlating Protophenomenal State 2 Quark/Lepton Config. Experience (Charge/Spin/Etc) Protophenomenal State 3
(3) The Simplicity Intuition
I intend to show that conscious beings are simple and are not composites. Conscious beings cannot be composed of multiple entities of any nature, including neutral substance. I mean to say the an aggregate of protophenomenal properties cannot possess consciousness. We can know from a zombie or inverted spectrum scenario that phenomenal consciousness cannot be strictly derived from physical properties. That is why this “buffering” protophenomenal state seems like it could solve the mind-body problem. However, I believe that neutral monism is a scapegoat which simply arises from a temporary lack of scientific knowledge. I believe that neutral monism can be argued false. I plan to show this through our simplicity intuition about phenomenally conscious beings. The neutral monism view depends on phenomenal consciousness arising from an aggregation of protophenomenal properties within one’s cognitive matter. That is stating that a collection of multiple entities possess phenomenal consciousness, which is absurd. It would not matter if the subatomic particles were all of the same material and composition and acted in systematic accordance with each other. We can know that these multiple protophenomenal properties cannot give rise to a single phenomenal consciousness. I believe this intuition of simple beings applies to all physical, mental, and neutral things throughout our existence, including protophenomenal features of quarks and leptons. I intend to show that (1) Conscious beings are simple. Multiple objects cannot coalesce and give rise to conscious experience. (2) It is absurd to accept that nature, relation, and environment have effect on premise (1). (3) Based from premise (1) and (2) the simplicity intuition applies to protophenomenal properties in the same fashion it does to physical objects. (4) Therefore, neutral monism is a crackpot theory that ends up false. Our only current method for testing this simplicity intuition is by a priori justification, hence the term intuition. We have no a posteriori scientific method of testing for phenomenal consciousness or protophenomenal property. David Chalmers raised an example to prove this, through a scenario in which you have a physically identical zombie, and this zombie
30 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University appears to be talking about and describing his phenomenal experience (which doesn’t exist). The zombie is describing his perceptual sensations, and worse yet, he starts talking about his identical zombie which he says has no phenomenal experience. Because of metaphysical possibilities like this combined with a lack of sufficient a posteriori testing we can only rely on our a priori intuition to study phenomenal consciousness.
(1). Conscious beings are simple and cannot be composed of multiple entities. Consider my identical twin and I. We are standing next to each other, and I feel a pain experience in my stomach. My identical twin also feels the qualitatively identical pain experience in his stomach. Can we possess a unified consciousness? No, it is absurd to believe that at that exact moment, my twin and I could be experiencing a unified sensation of stomach pain, euphoria, fear, or tasting paint chips. David Barnett believed “Pairs of people themselves are incapable of experience” . I agree, because conscious beings are simple and are not composed of parts. It is true, that there are more quarks and leptons then just a pair which constitute our cognitive matter, however this matters not. Imagine Putnam’s “swarm of bees” example. Could a swarm of bees feel pain in itself? Is there something it is like to be a swarm of bees? The logical answer is no to both. It matters not how many bees are within the swarm, they do not themselves experience any sort of unified phenomenal consciousness. Think of the absurdity if conscious beings were composites, and not simple. Lets take a pair of carrots for example. Each carrot is an individual object, and qualitatively identical to the other carrot. But, there exists a possible aggregation of the pair of carrots in which the following are possible. Each individual carrot remains qualitatively the same as if they did not compose the pair of carrots. The pair of carrots possesses a new intrinsic feature which neither of the individual carrots possess. This pair's new feature is not metaphysically determined by its individual members. This new intrinsic feature is consciousness. Regular pairs of carrots do not possess this new feature, nor the possibility to aggregate in such a way that they produce this new intrinsic feature. A property dualist might object and stipulate the following. A conglomeration of subatomic particles composing our cognitive matter necessarily possesses the feature of phenomenal consciousness. However this is false: these subatomic particles cannot have consciousness. We know this from the following reasons. We know that phenomenal properties do not necessarily logically supervene from physical properties (subatomic particle configuration). We know this from Descartes’ zombies scenario. We can also counter the property dualists with an inverted spectrum scenario: imagine a twin-earth scenario where all physical characteristics are identical to ours, however, the physically identical inhabitants undergo an inverted spectrum of phenomenal experience to correspond to the physically identical world. Because of these 2 possibilities (zombies and inverted spectrums), we know that phenomenally conscious beings are not constructed of multiple entities; including aggregates of strictly physical subatomic particles.
(2). It is absurd to accept that nature, relation, and environment of a composite's members have effect on premise (1).
31 Arete
It is possible, although highly unlikely, that intrinsic nature could alter the ability for a group of members to have a unified consciousness. It is no less absurd to believe that a pair of chairs, apples, computers, or subatomic particles could be conscious then it is to believe a pair of humans could. Intuition tells us that it is highly improbable to believe that the intrinsic nature of a pair or group has anything to do with the ability to produce a unified consciousness. The simplicity of consciousness is blind to the intrinsic nature of its entities.
I do not believe that environment or dispositional relation have the ability to counter our general simplicity intuition either. Could they have something to do with consciousness? Possibly, but general intuition will tell us otherwise. Consider David Barnett’s example posed as follows.
“Allowing for some radical changes to the laws of nature, imagine that some clever scientists shrink you and me down to the size of McCartney’s left and right brain hemispheres, respectively. The scientists then train us to function, at a relevant level, just as our respective hemispheres function: in terms of exchanging signals with the peripheral neurons and each other, we are trained to behave just as our respective hemispheres behave. McCartney’s left and right hemispheres are then removed and replaced with you and me, respectively. Someone pinches McCartney’s right arm (or his former right arm, should McCartney not survive the ordeal). When the signal arrives at the top of the spinal cord, I identify it; I notify you; we stimulate certain outbound neurons; and we move into a new functional state. As a result, McCartney’s head turns and faces his right arm; an irritated look appears on his face; and out of his mouth comes the words, “Stop that!” On a relevant functional level, you do just what McCartney’s left hemisphere would have done. And I do just what McCartney’s right hemisphere would have done. At a relevant level, the causal-dispositional relations borne by you and me are those that McCartney’s two brain hemispheres would have borne. Together, you and I function like an ordinary human brain. Given our new relations to each other and our environment, is it any less absurd to think that the pair we form might itself be conscious? No. To be sure, there is nothing absurd in the idea that McCartney might somehow survive the procedure; though unlikely, perhaps he would remain conscious throughout the ordeal. What seems absurd, rather, is that the pair comprising you and me might be conscious. Variation in how two people are related to each other and their environment has no significant effect on the absurdity of the idea that the pair itself might be conscious”.
Barnett’s example conveys that the simplicity intuition shows us that environment and dispositional relation really have no effect on a pair of things; the members, phenomenally conscious or not, giving rise to a unified experience in itself. Since environment, relation and nature do not affect a pair of people's ability to experience in itself, they should not affect a swarm of bees, or a conglomeration of subatomic particles ability to do so.
(3). Based from premise (1) and (2), the simplicity intuition applies to protophenomenal properties in the same fashion it does to physical objects. Since nature does not alter results of the a priori intuition, the nature of a protophenomenal property should hold no difference to simplicity whatsoever. It is true that we can only examine
32 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University physical and phenomenal entities, but this should not matter. For we find no difference within the physical and phenomenal no matter the nature of the property. It is absurd to think that these protophenomenal laws break the simplicity intuition due to a different nature of sorts. It is preposterous to imagine a property, that when coalesced with other entities of that property or any other property, possess a unified phenomenal consciousness. A neutral monist proponent might object and say the nature of a composite's members could have consciousness if the the members possess a nature which we are unexposed to, i.e. protophenomenal property. They would say that because we have never dealt with protophenomenal property, which constructs pairs from multiple entities, we form false intuitions that conscious beings are simple. I believe this view to be unsound. It is my firm conviction that, no matter what the multiple members natures are, they cannot compose a unified conscious being!
(4) Neutral Monism is unsound. When the previous three premises are put together, the argument points to the conclusion that neutral monism is a crackpot theory. When tied together my argument goes as follows.
Simplicity Intuition Argument PI- Objects cannot coalesce with other objects to form something that in itself has consciousnesss because conscious beings are simple. P2- Nature, relation and environment of these multiple entities do not affect the simplicity intuition. P3- The nature, relation and environment of protophenomenal properties are not different in such a way that multiple entities possess consciousness. P4- Through avoiding the simplicity intuition, neutral monism could prove sound if a single protophenomenal property gives rise to phenomenal consciousness (explained below). Conclusion- Neutral monism is unsound except in the instance of P4.
(4) Objection to the Simplicity Intuition on Behalf of Neutral Monism There is one possible counter-example that can subvert the simple consciousness intuition when applied to neutral monism. The counter-example is if phenomenal experience is possessed by a simple construction. It is a possibility that there is a single unique quark in my brain, which is under the governance of protophenomenal feature. This single protophenomenal feature could give rise to my phenomenal experience. This single protophenomenal feature could also dictate my physical state. This evades the general simplicity intuition because it is a single, simple member, having the phenomenal experience. I object to this counter-example. I argue that the possibility of protophenomenal properties actually existing is in general absurd. I argue against neutral monism in whole and present an alternative solution. My solution states that it is more plausible that physical forces govern these subatomic particles. These physical forces which govern the particles do not possess any feature of consciousness. If all of these neutral particle properties are in fact just physical forces, then there is no room for a single protophenomenal property to govern the physical state or have phenomenal experience. I elaborate on this solution in section (6).
(5) Chalmers’ Faux Pas
33 Arete
In his book The Conscious Mind David Chalmers accepts neutral monism. I would not choose this path. His primary view on these subatomic particles and their properties before accepting neutral monism is based on a very weak definition which I explain on the next page. He then goes to say that if one does not agree with his primary view, he accepts neutral monism as an alternative. I believe his primary position is even weaker then his accepting neutral monism as a fall back. He begins by accepting an ostensive definition of the fundamental particle’s properties (charge, spin, etc). He constructs his definitions of these properties on their observed actions, effects, and relations to other properties and objects. He accepts that the reductive explanation definition process is not necessary for the definition of these particle properties. Since we cannot know the intrinsic nature of these features, Chalmers would define the property charge as something similar to this. “To have charge is to do that (as he points to a quark). Charge is the feature that makes a particle act a certain way. X has positive charge if and only if X repels other positively charged particles and attracts negatively charged particles”. This is a terribly feeble definition. There is obviously more information needed to define a subatomic particle’s charge then its observed behavior. Many notable philosophers have argued against the process of ostensive definition. In the interest of brevity I will not write on this. Chalmers then offers an alternative to his primary view of ostensive definition in understanding these particle properties, a charge’s intrinsic nature could be a protophenomenal state (neutral monism). I reject both of these views. I reject his primary theory because his definitions of these subatomic properties are feeble and do not adequately explain, “what it is to be one of these subatomic properties”. I reject his alternative view of accepting neutral monism for two reasons. The first reason is the simplicity intuition of conscious beings, which I have explained previously. The second reason for my rejecting Chalmers’ neutral monism is my solution of strictly physical forces governing elementary particles, which I explain in section (6).
(6) The Solution of Unknown Physical Force In my second argument against neutral monism I defend our temporary scientific knowledge gap. I believe that these properties of charge, spin, etc are strictly physical features and forces and we currently lack the technology to understand these features and forces. I believe that as particle acceleration technology continues to progress; one day these properties will be understood and explained with an intrinsic physical feature that is completely guided by physical laws. If these properties are of strictly physical nature, then there is no room for protophenomenal properties to govern the particles. If there is no room for protophenomenal properties to govern the particles, then these protophenomenal properties do not exist. If these protophenomenal properties do not exist, then neutral monism is false. I do not reject the possibility that these quarks and leptons could be true elementary particles. It is definitely possible that we have discovered the most fundamental things in existence. I am only proposing that the properties of these quarks and leptons (charge, spin, etc) which govern the nature of these particles are strictly physical forces. I do not believe that protophenomenal properties are hiding in our quarks the same way the boogey man hides in your closet at night. I think it is absurd to accept such a view. I am arguing that an elementary particle’s properties are governed strictly by physical laws and forces. Neutral monism exploits our current knowledge gap. The process of the “neutral property” governing the elementary particles is the same exact process as if the “neutral
34 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University property” was just physical property. This protophenomenal feature is only different from my theorized physical force in that it claims to also give rise to experience. This is absurd. If I am correct, then protophenomenal property turns out to be strictly physical property. Neutral monism ends up being materialism because it has lost the feature which gives rise to phenomenal consciousness. Protophenomenal state was supposed to possess consciousness. We know that the phenomenal state does not necessarily logically supervene on the physical. If the protophenomenal is just physical, the argument crumbles into a back door for materialism. I have argued that neutral monism is false. The justification for this is in our simplicity intuition of phenomenal experience. I have also expressed the alternative solution that these “protophenomenal” properties are really physical features which have yet to be discovered by the high-energy physicists. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be once again operational this year (2009), and these questions will hopefully be answered sooner then we think. I believe that neutral monism is weak, and I believe that David Chalmers trotted down the wrong path when he accepted the neutral monism view. Neutral monism is a fallback position, reserved for those who cannot fully commit themselves to the more substantial theories of dualism or physicalism.
References
Barnett, David. You are Simple, Forthcoming in The Waning of Materialism: New Essays, edited by George Bealer and Robert Koons
Barnett, David. The Simplicity Intuition and Its Hidden Influence on Philosophy of Mind. Noûs 42: 308-35 (2008).
Chalmers, David. (1996) The Conscious Mind’ In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Putnam, Hilary. (1967) The Nature of Mental States, in Readings in Philosophy of Psychology : 1980, edited by N. Block., Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Putnam, Hilary. (1975) Mind, Language and Reality, Cambridge University Press
Russell, Bertrand. (1921) The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
Russell, Bertrand. Neutral Monism, and Excerpt from Philosophy
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Prentice Hall Publishing (1953).
For informative and illuminating conversation, I would like to thank Professor David Barnett and Professor Robert Rupert.
35 Arete
36 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Arrangement and the Properties of Parts Manifest in Wholes
Abstract: The assumption that wholes have causal powers (=properties), which its parts seem to lack, supports the contention that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. The properties of a whole have been misconstrued as, somehow, emergent and causally distinct properties due to the arrangement of the parts of a whole. My purpose in this paper will be to undermine the preceding assumptions. I begin by pointing out that assumptions wherein arrangement entails unique and distinct properties for a whole entails an appeal to a scientifically dated Emergentism and causal redundancy. I present an alternate theory to explain the relationship between the properties of wholes and the arrangement of parts that has greater explanatory power, while avoiding the need for emergence and the cost of over determinism: my contention will be that the properties that we attribute to wholes are actually the manifestation of preexisting, but heretofore unmanifested, properties of parts, which manifest only when a specific part comes in contact with another specific part in a particular arrangement. I argue that the properties of a part are all we need to give a complete account for the properties of a whole.
The idea that the arrangement of parts plays an important role in the composition of an object, which then demands the attention of the extensional mereologist, has been given consideration in the literature15. These treatments have been used as counter examples to the coherency of an extensional mereology and the claim that the whole is “nothing over and above” the sum of its parts16. Examples like the rearrangement of letters in a sentence or flowers in a bouquet are said to constitute different wholes than the original sentence and bouquet; therefore a
15 see Hempel (1953: 110), Rescher (1955: 10) and Eberle (1970: §2.10). 16 The phrase “nothing over and above” is used quite frequently in claiming that the whole is just the sum of its parts. van Inwagen (2001: 99-100) has a problem with this phrase, especially with the way Lewis (1991) uses it, Inwagen says: ‘But what does “nothing over and above” mean? This slippery phrase has had a lot of employment in philosophy, but what it means is never explained by its employers. Sometimes it needs no explanation, for it sometimes has a straightforward mereological sense. (Think of the materialist who says “I am nothing over and above my body”; presumably he means that he has no part that is not a part of his body.) If Lewis is using “nothing over and above” in this straightforward mereological sense, then the quoted sentence means that a fusion has no parts other than its parts. But this, surely, is not what Lewis intended to convey by this sentence. It would be interesting to see an example of a thing that Lewis thinks is something over and above its parts; it would be interesting to see an example of something that had this feature according to some philosophical theory that Lewis rejected’. While I am employing the phrase in van Inwagen’s “straightforward mereological sense”, my contention in this paper is that there are philosophers who have a philosophical theory, which employs the feature of something “over and above”, that being, the properties of a whole as manifest in an object’s causal efficacy. I plan to lay out their theory in detail and reject it.
37 Arete whole is something more, something distinct, than just the fusion of its parts. However, these lines of argument about arrangement have not dealt with another consequence of philosophical import, which is that, compositionally, arrangement seems to determine directly the properties for a whole. The determination of the whole’s properties could be used wrongly to strengthen the argument that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. Consider the following line of thought:
Wholes appear to have properties singular to them. MacBride (2005) puts it like this,
‘mereological fusions, things that most everyone believes in… appear to be distinct from their members or parts [because] they enjoy properties their members or parts lack’ (my emphasis)17.
These properties of the whole are the result of the particular arrangement of the whole’s proper parts18—properties that distinguish themselves from the properties of the proper parts by a difference in causal efficacy. Upon rearrangement of proper parts, new and different properties emerge for a particular whole: ergo, if there are distinct levels of differing properties in composition, then one could argue that wholes are distinct from the sum of their proper parts.
In summation, here are the premises and conclusions in the claims made above, which I give in the following argument:
(1) The particularity of arrangement in composition accounts for a whole.
(2) There are differentiating ontological levels of properties in the composition of a whole resulting from arrangement. Therefore,
(3) Those levels make the properties of wholes distinct from those of their proper parts. Therefore, from (2) and (3),
(4) The properties of wholes are evidence for wholes being ‘over and above’ the sum of their parts.
17 MacBride (2005: 125) 18 I will be using the primitive “proper part” in the rest of the paper as I am following Varzi (2008), in that, I assume that composite objects require proper parts for identity criteria.
38 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Now, while I do agree that (1) is an important premise that needs to be elaborated upon further than it already has in the literature, I disagree with (2) and by extension (3). If (2) and (3) are wrong, then they cannot be used in service of (4). Regardless, the above argument does not present a trivial problem to the extensional mereologist, who wants to claim that wholes are just the sum of their proper parts. However, the presumption that the properties of the whole are privileged seems to be a non-issue for some philosophers, who take this to be a given; e.g.
Normore (2006) writes, ‘It is natural to wonder how the properties of the whole are related to the properties of the parts’, with which I would agree, but then, he continues with, ‘It seems clear that wholes do have properties had by none of their parts… It also seems very plausible to suppose that the properties of a whole are derivative upon the properties of its parts’19. Bedau and Humphreys (2008) add, ‘Some properties apply only to wholes formed out of assemblies of more basic parts; it is conceptually incoherent for them to be applied to parts’20. I will refer to this unchallenged presumption in the literature as the Privileged Properties of Wholes theory
(PPW).
In section I of this paper, by fleshing out just what is the case being made in PPW, I will give a full treatment to the above claims. In section II, I go on to suggest that the main source for the claims in (2) and (3) comes from an early version of Emergentism that has become scientifically dated, as well as, how an appeal to emergence does not supply an unproblematic and decisive argument in support of the claims in PPW like its proponent would want or expect from emergence. In section III, I explain how PPW commits its proponent to objects with causally redundant properties, and to do so, I use my own version of Trenton Merricks’
19 Normore (2006: 753). 20 Bedau and Humphreys (2008: 10).
39 Arete
Overdetermination Argument21 as support for my criticism. Finally, in section IV, I present an alternative theory against (2) and (3) in order to explain the properties of wholes from arrangement. I argue that the properties of a proper part are all we need to give a complete account of the properties of a whole, that in fact, they explain the properties of wholes. I hope to show that my theory is more attractive since it does not incur the costs of PPW—it obviates the need for postulating additional entities based on Emergentism, and so, in this instance, does not entail causal redundancy. I hope to make it clear that PPW posits an overpopulation of levels of being that no ontology needs countenance (especially no formal one).
In this paper the balance sheet of my ontological debts contains the following antecedent conditions: I presume property realism22. I also presume a distinction between properties and parts to be a primitive fact23. In reading the paper I hope that it will become evident how I use the term “properties” as opposed to how I use the term “parts” and that their differences will be made apparent through my use of each, that being, properties are had by their parts but do not make up their parts. Nevertheless, I do realize that I cannot get away without at least a partial explanation of why I am motivated to make such a distinction. Therefore, I offer the following sketch:
Parts are not reducible to their properties, and therefore, properties are not the constituents of parts. If properties were the constituents, then I would have some type of bundle theory for the composition of a whole forced upon me. With a bundle theory I would have to
21 Merricks (2003: 56-84). 22 In this paper I will be loose with my use of the term “property” and will use it to designate universals and/or particulars and the qualitative and/or dispositional (for causal powers). That said, I leave it up to the reader to decide if there really are only universals, or only particulars, or only qualitative properties, or only dispositions/powers, or the existence of some versus all, or that a disposition and a qualitative property are one and the same categorical property, which is covariant, and etc. I see these issues as orthogonal to the discussion in the paper. 23 cf. Martin (1997: 195): ‘[properties are] things about or things had by [objects] that would not be these [objects] themselves or even be parts of them’ (emphasis is Martin’s); Molnar (2003: 51): ‘Objects belong to one category, [properties] to another, and the categories appear to be irreducibly different. Both categories are wanted in metaphysics’.
40 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University contend with what I consider would be a legitimate claim that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. I believe this to be the case since the bundle of properties that would constitute an object would need an extra property as a binding relation, a relation of compresence or instantiation, which, as is well known, has garnered much discussion in the literature as a problem for any type of bundle theory24—although, I am not presupposing that to be a weakness in this discussion, since it only bears relevance on what I propose next if my intuitions are unsustainable. I submit that the extra relation property needed could not rightly be included as a part of the mereological sum: if it were a part of the sum, then the problem impugned to bundle theories and their binding relation as creating a vicious regress would be then relevant25.
However, I am not convinced that such a problem occurs in this instance because I do not think that a binding relation property could be included in the mereological sum, since the binding relation would be what creates the sum, while not being that sum. Hence, if a binding relation property for a whole cannot be included in the sum of the whole’s parts, then a whole would indeed have at least one property unique to it, which would distinguish the whole from the sum of its parts. The whole would be ‘over and above’ the sum of its parts. Therefore, if I countenance properties as parts I will have a different problem than the one I want to address in this paper.
Now, while I have put forth the preceding proviso as a presupposed commitment, so that, my arguments in the paper will be presented as if a difference between properties and parts holds, I do acknowledge what is trivially true in this case: from a purely mereological point of view anything, including a property, of course, can be a part. That said, a discussion of my last presumption is for another paper and I will not be arguing for it herein.
24 whether it be a bundle of universals or tropes, e.g., see Daly (1997: 156-158); Molnar (2003: 47-51); Simons (1994). 25 see Daly (1997: 157, footnote 26) and above note for relevant discussion of the vicious regress.
41 Arete
I. Wholes seemingly establish three distinct ontological levels of properties: the properties of the individual proper parts, the sum of the properties of all the proper parts and the properties of the whole, with the last level presumably supervening on the preceding ones. The properties of the whole appear to be obviously different than the properties of the proper part or their sum, which would entail (by Leibniz’s Law) that the whole cannot be equated with the “mere” sum of its proper parts, that is, they make wholes something ‘over and above’ the whole’s sum.
By common sense we would think that the roundness of a baseball and its ability to roll, or any other property of a baseball, could not be reduced to the spin properties of all the individual subatomic particles in a baseball. It is only in the particular arrangement of subatomic particles that compose a baseball that the properties of a baseball are exhibited in ways that those same particles alone or arranged together differently could not. With this peculiarity of arrangement comes the problem of the identity of a whole: if the exact same particles, and only those particles, in a baseball were rearranged, then we assign a different identity to those particles in their new arrangement—they are no longer a baseball, they are a cap. We have the exact same objects as proper parts (subatomic particles) with the exact same properties (their given spin, and etc.) but there is assumed to be a level of newly emerged properties supervening on those of the proper parts and the Identity of Indiscernibles criterion will not allow us to say the baseball has the same identity as the cap if the two are qualitatively not the same. Leibniz’s law would be contradicted26.
Identity, then, helps make a case for the distinctness of the properties of a whole from those of its proper parts: if the properties of the proper parts stay the same while the properties of
26 This seems to be trivially true but it motivates one to make a leap from thinking that arrangement creates the properties of the hat, which were absent in the properties of the baseball, to thinking that the properties of the proper parts are incidental to arrangement in a whole.
42 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University the whole change, then wholes must have properties differentiating from those of the proper parts over which they then supervene. The argument can be expressed on a macro-level in the following way:
‘Yesterday there was a pile of electronic parts on my desk. I identified the sum of those objects as the whole I call Yesterday’s Electrical Parts (YEP). In terms of YEP as a whole, you could say YEP composed a heap. Now, say that today a computer technician takes all of YEP and puts its proper parts together (differently than YEP) to make me a laptop. The electronic parts have changed from the whole, which was a heap, to a whole, which is a laptop. I identify it as My Laptop (ML)27. The changed relation between the proper parts, which is the different arrangement of the electronic parts, allows for a “new” whole, ML, which turns out to have vastly different properties than YEP. In fact, the different arrangement of proper parts that now compose ML make a “new” whole that has “new” causal powers: I can surf the Internet, write a paper, listen to music, and etc. The arrangement of proper parts in YEP did not have these particular properties. If the proper parts in the first arrangement could not make a whole with these particular properties, then these “new” causal powers must not come from those same proper parts when the proper parts are each considered distinct from their whole, or when the proper parts are considered together but not in their current arrangement. YEP is not ML: they have different properties and therefore have different identities. Again, the “new” causal powers of ML are the product of the arrangement of the proper parts. That leads me to the conclusion that ML, a differently arranged “new” whole, has properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of the proper parts. According to what the relation of proper parts happens to be (in
27 I owe this analogy, albeit, as a somewhat convoluted deviation, to van Inwagen (2006) and his discussion of a mereological sum of Tuesday’s Bricks and a sum of Brick House.
43 Arete this case arrangement) there will be different identities and different wholes, therefore, a whole is over and above the sum of its proper parts’.
II. Implicit in PPW is that with arrangement you get saddled with some theory of emergence.
However, it is important to understand what type of emergence PPW entails. I believe that the emergence to which PPW appeals to happens to be the earliest version of Emergentism, as I intend to show. The emphasis that PPW places on the importance of arrangement for the emergence of new causally efficacious properties of the whole is isomorphic with the claims of early Emergentism on the causal efficacy of structures due to arrangement. While certain tenets from the early inception of Emergentism at the end of the nineteenth century are still maintained, the science behind those tenets and the other claims of that earlier historical period have been abandoned or “over hauled” due to their inaccuracy. Emergentism has become its own theoretically complex phenomenon, with several options on the table, all of which make use of science as examples of emergence that in turn explain its phenomena28. Causation and arrangement are still important to contemporary emergence, but in different ways and for different reasons than the way a conjunction of the two had been formulated in the early period of thought on emergence that began with J. S. Mill’s A System of Logic (1874) and ended with C.
D. Broad’s The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925).
McLaughlin (2008) 29 notes that the early traditional (British) Emergentists believed that the arrangement of an object’s constituents30 caused certain structures, especially chemical
28 Consider the highly contentious case of Schrödinger’s “quantum entanglements”, which has become the go to example in order to prove emergence in physics on the quantum level, see Humphreys (1997:15). 29 I am indebted to McLaughlin (2008: 19-59) and (1997: 25-43) for knowledge of Emergentism (especially British) and I will follow his history of Emergentist claims in my discussion of emergence in what follows. 30 I will use the mereological term “proper parts” in place of “constituents”, since it is more relevant to the paper and admits of no misuse in replacing the word “constituents” with the term “proper parts”.
44 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University compounds, to have ‘configurational forces’ that the proper parts did not exhibit as distinct objects. These ‘configurational forces’ presumably supervened on the properties of proper parts since only as a particular structural whole, from a particular arrangement of proper parts, were such properties able to be substantiated. According to the arrangement of proper parts a whole had different properties, more specifically, “new” causal powers that individual or different arrangements of proper parts did not.
These early Emergentists thought that ‘configurational forces’ were best exemplified in the special sciences, which were set apart from physics, and that the paradigmatic example was to be found in chemistry and the particular structures that occurred in chemical bonding. It was due to the way certain molecules formed that gave us different chemical elements and agents31.
From our current knowledge of quantum mechanics we now know that chemical compounds do not have ‘configurational forces’ based on the arrangement of their proper parts. McLaughlin seals the coffin on emergent ‘configurational forces’ by saying:
Quantum mechanical explanations of chemical bonding in terms of the electro-magnetic force, and the advances this led to in molecular biology and genetics render the doctrines of configurational chemical and vital forces enormously implausible… Chemical bonding can be explained by properties of electrons, and 32 there are no fundamental chemical forces .
This admission on the part of McLaughlin suggests a very important point. Pace PPW, the causal efficacy of wholes can be explained in terms of the behavior of the objects that are their proper parts. When the quantum level is reached, it becomes evident that the properties of those proper parts are doing the work for the whole. At the quantum level it is the properties of the subatomic particles that determine everything that is needed for the whole, furthermore, and by extension, they can determine the whole itself as the objects that make up the whole’s basic
31 cf. Molnar (2003: 194-198) and his critique on J. S. Mill’s Composition of Causes and the question of an epistemic or metaphysical difference in Mill’s “exemplification of chemical reactions”. 32 McLaughlin (2008: 49).
45 Arete constituents. What happens at the quantum level with and between the objects that are the proper parts of a whole is what gives a composite object identity.
However, the historically early views of Emergentism are still influential in contemporary debates on emergence33. It is clearly the case, as well, that no matter to what theory of emergence a philosopher ascribes, all Emergentists bifurcate the properties of proper parts from the properties of the whole, since it is the properties of the whole at a higher level of complexity that emerge from the properties of its proper parts as objects on a lower level of complexity, that is, emergence posits hierarchical levels of entities that are based on complexity.
As we learned above from the early Emergentists, the bifurcation of wholes from their proper parts has direct consequences on the model of causation for the whole. Martin (1997) explains this bifurcation between the properties of wholes and its proper parts best, he says:
When a whole is considered as over and above all of its [proper parts] with all of their interrelations and interreactions and [properties] for these, that is to consider “over and aboveness” of the whole as a causal 34 factor apart from anything concerning the causal operativenesses of any or even all of the [proper parts] .
Martin points out exactly what the philosopher of PPW wants for her theory: the distinctness of the causal efficacy of the whole from that of its proper parts. However, why are these new causally efficacious properties of the whole distinct from the properties of the proper parts? Or are they really distinct properties?
The philosopher of PPW could appeal to some type of supervenience to make the new properties distinct from those of the proper parts. Unfortunately, even in current debates over emergence, it is not so clear as to how or if supervenience plays a part in emergent properties.
The ambiguity stems from the fact that in most accounts of supervenience the supervening property is coincident with the base property, which makes it harder to pick out one rather than
33 see van Cleve (1990: 215-226) and McLaughlin’s discussion of van Cleve, McLaughlin (1997). 34 Martin (1997: 197).
46 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University the other35. This means that the philosopher of PPW cannot get distinctness for the “higher- level” property so easily. It would take some work (which, possibly, could be of an empirical nature, since she would be dealing with physical objects subject to physics, chemistry, and etc.) to get properties for a whole distinct from the existent properties, and their interactions, of its proper parts.
Consider, for instance, the much used example of a fragile glass. She could say that the property of fragility supervenes on the properties of the glass’ microstructure. Even then, it is not so easy to tease out the fragility from the microstructure. If the microstructure does not come prepackaged with fragility as one of its properties, then exactly how does the glass get the property of fragility36? But without the microstructure it is taken as a certainty that there is no fragility. The philosopher of PPW would want her emergent properties to be recognizably distinct from the properties of the microstructure, which means that considering fragility as an emergent property from the microstructure may not be a helpful example. Therefore, she might not want to appeal to supervenience to get the job done. However—to see this example through to its conclusion—if the microstructure is the proper parts and their properties and the glass is the whole, then fragility, as a higher-level property, would be a property of the glass qua whole.
Again, the philosopher of PPW does not want to countenance fragility as a property of the glass qua whole—it is too much of a problem case for her theory—its distinctness is questionable; especially as to how she would be able to establish securely the distinctness between the property of fragility and the properties of the proper parts that make up the microstructure.
But, I feel rather charitable, and so, I will allow the philosopher of PPW to use supervenience in service of her emergence. In fact, I do not even mind if she conflates the two.
35 see Humphreys (1997: 7). 36 The theory I propose against PPW is meant to answer this type of question.
47 Arete
Because, in the end it makes no real difference—the hard question still remains: do we really need new properties, which allowably supervene on a lower level of properties, to explain wholes, if it is possible that the properties we already have can get the work done?
III. What work is getting done from where? The philosopher of PPW wants to say that work is getting done on two different levels of properties as the bearers of causal efficacy—the properties of the whole and the summed properties of the proper parts; however, that in turn leaves her open to a charge of causal redundancy. To say that a whole is causally redundant is just to say that a whole causes one single instance of an effect twice over, that is, the same work is getting done from different levels of entity in one and the same whole. More specifically, when talking about properties and their causal efficacy, causal redundancy means that for a single whole there are ‘two or more different properties that make, under all possible circumstances, exactly the same contribution to the causal powers of the things that have them’37.
What this does not mean is that one instance of a particular effect is caused by the conjunction of two “different” causes but, instead, that the same causality is being exercised twice over towards that particular effect.
Prima facie, this does not seem to make sense and the philosopher of PPW will want to deny that the properties of the whole and the properties of the proper parts are causing the same instance of an effect. She wants the two levels to be employed in different work because, on her account, the whole and the sum of its proper parts are causally distinct. Presumably, for her, the summed properties of the proper parts are engaged in the work of creating the emergent properties of the whole and giving those supervening properties their causal efficacy distinct from, over and above, and downwardly to the summed properties of the proper parts. However,
37 Shoemaker (1997: 236).
48 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University the philosopher of PPW lacks an explanation for not just how the properties of proper parts
“create” or make new properties of the whole emerge, which are distinct from them but, also, how those new properties of the whole then become causally relevant from, over and downward to those of the proper parts (because, despite their distinctness, the whole will, according to
PPW, need to have causal relevance over its proper parts). However, can she really claim that the causal efficacy of the whole, given to it by its proper parts, can then be turned back downward onto the proper parts; especially as this will be synchronic, since the efficacy given to the whole will immediately be exercised by the whole over that which supplies the whole’s efficacy? Even
Kim (1999) admits that it is difficult to believe that the preceding is coherent and, while he believes it to be so, he is unable to provide a cogent argument for how this (as he calls it)
‘synchronic reflexive downward causation’, requiring ‘upward determination’, works38.
However, modulo “downward causation” or “upward determination” for the moment (or any type of vertical causation whatsoever), the philosopher of PPW might proffer an seemingly uncontroversial case, which we can all agree upon, where she believes she can assign causal efficacy to an object over its proper parts and therefore establish the whole’s causal distinction from that of its proper parts. Think of something as simple as a baseball striking a window and shattering the glass. Surely the glass shatters from the baseball qua baseball-and-its-properties and not qua summed-subatomic-particles-and-their-properties. This because, it is the properties of the baseball qua whole and not the properties, like spin or charge, from the objects on the quantum level, that are the proper parts, that cause the window to shatter. However, as I have argued above, I do not find this to be a compelling or uncontroversial example at all. I find that
38 Kim (1999: 28): ‘How is it possible for the whole to causally affect its constituent parts on which its very existence and nature depend? If causation or determination is transitive, doesn’t this ultimately imply a kind of self- causation, or self-determination—an apparent absurdity? It seems to me that there is reason to worry about the coherence of the whole idea… […] Both the downward causation and the upward emergence (or determination) hold for states or conditions occurring at the very same time’.
49 Arete this actually commits one to a baseball qua whole “over and above” and, then as well, that baseball qua sum of its subatomic particles both striking the window, that is, if the whole is considered as causally distinct from its proper parts—our philosopher of PPW cannot block me by claiming that the properties of the subatomic particles do not have the causal efficacy attributed to the whole, since it would be absurd to say that the subatomic particles of the baseball did not interact with the particles of the window. This is no straw man argument, it is a perfect example of the type of problem the philosopher of PPW must contend with: the absurdity that follows is exactly indicative of just where the position held by the philosopher of PPW will lead her. And, I cannot see her being able to bite this bullet.
The above example, from the viewpoint of PPW, if it is exemplary at all, is obviously too explanatorily weak to convince one that a whole is causally distinct from its proper parts.
Merricks (2003) agrees with me and provides an explanatory story that mirrors the one I have been presenting contra PPW. He would say that the above scenario is overdetermined, and thus, causally redundant39. He explains overdetermination as such:
Overdetermination is understood in the most literal, straightforward, and natural sense possible. An effect is overdetermined if the following are true: that effect is caused by an object; that object is causally irrelevant to whether some other—i.e. numerically distinct—object or objects cause that effect; and the other object or objects do indeed cause that effect40.
What the above means, for the purposes of this paper, is that the proper parts of a whole can be decomposed into numerically distinct objects that are not the whole itself (since a whole cannot be its own proper part—proper parthood is irreflexive). The whole, then, does not cause the proper parts to have an effect because the whole per se is what causes an effect as its own proper entity, i.e. there is “lateral causation”, which makes the whole causally irrelevant towards its proper parts; and, returning to the concern about “downward causation”, this is a result of the
39 I believe Kim’s explication of the problem above to show nicely how this can be construed as the case. 40 Merricks (2003: 56-59).
50 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University philosopher of PPW wanting the two levels to be causally distinct. However, the proper parts are just as causally efficacious as the whole. Therefore, whenever a whole causes an effect, the proper parts, now causally separated from the whole, have to be taken into consideration as causing that selfsame effect, as well. To put it another way, the ball that shatters the window does not cause its subatomic particles to shatter the window, the direction of the causation is horizontal—not horizontal and vertical; but if the ball shatters the window, then the subatomic particles, in virtue of making up the ball, must also shatter the window. Hence, the shattering of the window is overdetermined. This all follows from the philosopher of PPW having her cake and wanting to eat it too: if the baseball really is causally distinct from its subatomic particles, then it must cause the window to shatter on its own “merits” without the additional need of
“downward causation” on its subatomic particles to get the job done. Nevertheless, the subatomic particles do interact with those of the window, also causing the glass to shatter.
To reiterate, if I say that the ball is something over and above its subatomic particles then
I commit myself to two things shattering the window—first the ball and then its subatomic particles, which brings up the problem identified earlier, that is, the ball, including and along with the subatomic particles that make up the ball, strikes the window “twice” over. But this just does not sound right! Rather, it should be understood in the following manner: It is the sum of all the subatomic particles working in conjunction qua baseball that shatters the window.
The philosopher of PPW cannot have it both ways: the properties of the proper parts cannot create for a whole its properties but then have the properties of the whole dictate and control the properties, and their interactions, of the proper parts when the power exercised by the whole is just the power from the proper parts. There is no two-way street, as Kim’s ‘incoherent’ synchronic vertical causation eloquently demonstrates. However, something causes the window
51 Arete to shatter, and if the ball cannot make its subatomic particles do it, then the subatomic particles must be doing it themselves, but (and this “but” is paramount), all together. So, the work must be getting done through the interaction of the properties of the proper parts—but that is exactly what gives us the properties of the whole. Correct. Which is just the point! The subatomic particles working all together is the ball shattering the window, tout court.
Merricks develops a schema, which he calls the Overdetermination Argument. The following is my own version, based off of Merricks’ schema, for why the properties of the ball, if thought of as distinct, like the philosopher of PPW would want it to be, from those of its proper parts (as I shall argue), are causally inefficacious pace PPW, but which, nevertheless, the philosopher of PPW is committed:
(5) Object O is causally distinct from its proper parts PP1… PPn. Therefore,
(6) Object O is causally irrelevant to whether its proper parts PP1… PPn, acting in concert, cause effect E.
(7) PP1… PPn, acting in concert, cause effect E.
(8) E is not overdetermined. Therefore,
(9) O does not cause E.
So, with this argument we get a causally inert O, which is definitely not what the philosopher of
PPW wants or needs. However, in this instance, it logically follows from the stipulation in PPW that the whole be distinct from its proper parts.
However, if we deny any distinction between the whole and its sum, then the argument can be restated in a way that obviates overdetermination by saying:
(10) Object O is its proper parts PP1… PPn.
52 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
(11) PP1… PPn, acting in concert, cause effect E.
(12) E is not overdetermined. Therefore,
(13) O causes E.
It is only when we countenance O and its properties as distinct from the sum of PPn and their properties that we have a problem with overdetermination. If an E is overdetermined, then it is only because we have made the properties of O causally redundant by positing hierarchical levels of properties41. And in the end, the philosopher, who claims that there are properties of proper parts and additionally properties of wholes, has only the causal efficacy of the whole’s properties to help her if and only if the properties of the whole cannot be cashed out in the interaction of the properties of the proper parts.
IV. Again, proper parts have all the properties needed to account for the behavior of wholes. To be clear, no “new” properties need be accounted for since proper parts “carry” all properties necessary for wholes. One may want to object at this point, ‘if this were true, then why do the
41 Merricks would not be happy with how I have reformulated and explained his Overdetermination Argument in service to the purpose of my paper. He has a problem with claiming that the properties of the whole just are the properties of its proper parts, because, as a mereological nihilist, for him there are no properties of the whole since there is no whole. And so, one cannot engage in any talk where “object O’s causing an effect E is analyzed as O’s proper parts PP participating in the appropriate way that causes E”, instead, he maintains that: ‘A baseball and its constituent atoms, all being objects, do the same kind of causal work,’ with which I agree, but then, ‘thus an analysis of one’s causing in terms of the other’s causing is bound to be circular. And so any such analysis ought to be abandoned right from the start’ (p.69). I disagree. Analysis just is the exhibiting of complex wholes as compounds and functions of more basic ones, that is, analysis is, in effect, “to give a reductionist account”. But, I suspect that what Merricks says hangs on the fact that if we claim that the causal work is done in the same way on a lower level as it is done on a higher level, then you are snared by circularity. However, if the whole functions in a certain way and in our analysis we posit that the whole is composed of more basic wholes, or proper parts, which perform the functioning in that certain way of that whole, then we circumvent any charge of circularity when we explain how the proper parts work together in a way the whole does not in order to get the functioning of the whole done. In that sense, contra mereological nihilistic concerns, it is totally reasonable to talk of the properties of the whole as being the sum of the properties of its proper parts and the causal work of the whole as being the causal work of the sum of its proper parts. Therefore, when the causal efficacy of the whole is understood as the causal efficacy of the sum of the proper parts, I would argue that the charge of circularity does not apply.
53 Arete proper parts not manifest the properties we have in wholes when they are separated from a whole?’ The answer lies in the one aspect that the opposing philosopher gets right but misapplies: she is correct about the importance of arrangement for properties however, there is no need to posit new properties when the already existent properties can get the job done.
The relation, such as arrangement, which proper parts have to one another allows for actual but hereto before unmanifested properties to become manifest in the particular composition of a whole. That is, proper parts have unmanifested properties that are actual, which only become manifest when they are in a certain relation to other properties from other proper parts42. More specifically, the causal efficacy that we attribute to wholes is actually the mutual manifestation from a property of one proper part and a property of another proper part in conjunction. Martin (1993) calls these properties ‘reciprocal disposition partners’ (modulo
Martin’s use of the sometime controversial “disposition”, we have “the mutual manifestation of reciprocal property partners”, which still gets us to where we want to go). So, when a property of a proper part comes in contact with its reciprocal property partner in another proper part, together they are able to mutually manifest any and all causality that we attribute to the whole43.
In the case of the properties of the proper parts, arrangement entails two types of manifestations: firstly, certain properties of a proper part and secondly, their combined causal efficacy for the whole. It is not that one proper part lacks a property that we see in a whole, but instead, the property of the proper part is not manifest (and will not manifest until it comes into relation with the right reciprocal property partner). This does not mean that an unmanifested property is not real. Whether they are manifest or not, all the properties of a proper part are there.
42 Subatomic particles and their interactions serve as an example. We are only privy to their properties when they interact with other subatomic particles and our observational instruments. 43 All I am doing here is taking C. B. Martin’s theory of property interaction, adding arrangement, and applying it to parts and wholes in explaining their interactions with each other.
54 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
When the proper parts are rearranged their properties will be in contact with different reciprocal property partners of other proper parts than in the previous arrangement and different mutual manifestations of the properties will then occur. It is due to the contact of the proper parts, which have certain reciprocal property partners, or lack of contact, that explains the whole.
And since different partners allow for different manifestations we need not ascribe infinity of properties to one proper part44.
All a proper part need have is certain properties that manifest with the right reciprocal property partners in order to get what we would describe as the typical manifestations of a certain whole. In that sense there should be no worry that we are just shifting the over- multiplication of properties from wholes down to the level of proper parts. Proper parts need not have unlimited properties—just contact with the right reciprocal property partners, which is all we need from proper parts. If proper parts have all the necessary properties to account for a whole, then there is no need to posit n-adic, or forever-increasing, additional properties with each whole and modus tollens a philosophy of additional entities.
So, in the case of YEP and ML, it is only natural that when the proper parts were rearranged from YEP to ML that ML would be able to do all the things a laptop can do—the proper parts of YEP already had the “right” properties for ML, they just were not manifest in
YEP due to the lack of contact of proper parts in an arrangement that allowed their properties to be manifest in ML.
Further, the properties of a proper part get us the typical manifestations, which we would ascribe to a certain whole, according to the contact of a whole’s proper parts with those of another whole’s proper parts as well. Recall the baseball. The arrangement of its proper parts, with the right reciprocal property partners, mutually manifest 1) the structural properties of
44 see Martin (1993: 518).
55 Arete roundness and 2) the rolling of the baseball. While wholes maintain the integrity of their proper parts, they do not exist in a vacuum—they interact with other wholes. The interaction entails that the proper parts of the baseball must also come into contact with another whole’s proper parts that will have potential reciprocal property partners for the proper parts of the baseball. In other words, the properties of the proper parts are not exhausted solely within the arrangement’s manifestation of the properties of the proper parts, i.e. a whole is not a closed system of properties and their interactions. To explain further, the proper parts of the baseball have the right properties for it to roll, but its proper parts must come in contact with the right proper parts of another whole’s surface for it to roll. A baseball placed on a surface of gooey, sucking mud will not roll. The baseball’s proper parts are not in contact with the proper parts of a surface with the right reciprocal property partners, which would allow for the mutual manifestation of rolling—even though the properties of the baseball’s proper parts already include the properties for that to happen.
So what happens to the properties that were once manifested and are now “gone” because we rearranged the proper parts? To be manifest some of the properties of a proper part have to be in contact with the right reciprocal property partner. When certain properties are no longer in contact with their reciprocal property partner they no longer manifest themselves. That is not to say that the proper parts have lost those properties: those properties are still there. They have not
“gone” anywhere. If new properties do not emerge into existence for wholes, then already existent properties do not cease to exist: it is more attractive to apply a law of conservation for properties in this particular case45.
45 However, this is not to say that objects cannot lose or gain properties in other cases (upon which I will not speculate in this paper).
56 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
Now, if proper parts have a limit to the properties they “carry”, there may be further non- mereological implications for how we should understand a proper part and a whole. Recall that
YEP and ML are composed of the same proper parts, that is, there is a quantifiable amount of proper parts and that amount does not change just like the proper parts do not change. So specified, there are only so many configurations that those proper parts can be arranged in. The consequence is that there is a limit to how many properties those proper parts can or do manifest, given the “external” objects that come into contact with them. Say we add more proper parts. On my theory, added proper parts could cause the manifestation of other properties and causality, much like when the proper parts of a whole come in contact with the proper parts of another whole.
However, a question arises when the properties of a proper part are stipulated as limited.
The question is whether the properties of a proper part, once all possible manifestations and interactions have occurred, will be only of certain kinds and will those kinds have a limit. It is at this point where I want to beg off. While less is usually considered better, and hence my reductionist account of properties, the question asked is not an innocent question on the parsimony of my theory. It requires a substantial ontological theory on ‘what is a property’, as opposed to ‘how does a property work’, which may well impact how one can or cannot talk about proper parts and wholes beyond an extensional mereology. For the purposes of this paper it is enough to give a reductionist account in order to block the philosopher, who claims that wholes are more than the sum of their parts, from using properties as a prop for her claim.
Conclusion. The central fallacy in PPW is in thinking that wholes are the products of emergent properties, which I hoped to have shown has unattractive consequences and that also leads to the cost of causal redundancy. The actual case is that we are experiencing different manifestations
57 Arete from the inter-exchange of the properties of the proper parts—not new properties, but new manifestations from and of already existent properties. The upshot is that the explanatory power in positing that the properties of proper parts act with reciprocal property partners of other proper parts to mutually manifest any and all causal efficacy successfully gives us a working reductionist account for properties with greater explanatory power—and, by extension, we could argue, a reductionist account of wholes to their proper parts, that is, wholes are the sum of their proper parts, tout court.
Additionally, I believe that we have shown that arrangement is very important for composition, which cannot be ignored by the extensional mereologist. Furthermore, arrangement deserves more creative attention in our understanding of the principles that inhere in composition—beyond examples of rearrangement used to counter extensional mereology like that of words in sentences or flowers in a bouquet. Finally, while this paper goes some way in arguing that a whole is just the sum of its parts, it clearly makes the case that arrangement in composition and the properties of an object do not entail that a whole be “over and above” the sum of its parts.
58 The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at Rutgers University
References
Bedau Mark and Paul Humphreys (eds.), 2008, Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, Cambridge: MIT Press. Daly Chris, 1997, “Tropes”, in D. H. Mellor and Alex Oliver (eds.), Properties, Oxford: University Press, 140-159. Eberle R. A., 1970, Nominalistic Systems, Dordrecht: Reidel. Hempel C. G., 1953, “Reflections on Nelson Goodman’s The Structure of Appearance”, Philosophical Review 62, 108-116 Humphreys, Paul, 1997, “How Properties Emerge”, Philosophy of Science 64, 1-17. Husserl Edmund, 1970, “Investigation III: On The Theory of Wholes and Parts”, in Logical Investigations Volume 2, J. N. Findlay (trans.), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 3-45. Kim Jaegwon, 1999, “Making Sense of Emergence”, Philosophical Studies 95, 3-36. Lewis David, 1991, Parts of Classes, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. McLaughlin Brian P., 1997, “Emergence and Supervenience”, Intellectica 25, 25-43. — 2008, “The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism”, in Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphreys (eds.), Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, Cambridge: MIT Press, 19-59. MacBride Fraser, 2005, “Lewis’s Animadversions on the Truthmaker Principle”, in Helen Beebee and Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Oxford: University Press, 117-140. Martin C. B., 1993, “The Need for Ontology: Some Choices”, Philosophy 68, 505-522. — 1997, “On The Need For Properties: The Road to Pythagoreanism and Back”, Synthese 112, 193-231. — 2008, The Mind in Nature, Oxford: University Press. Merricks Trenton, 2003, Objects and Persons, Oxford: University Press. Molnar George, 2003, Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, Oxford: University Press. Normore Calvin G., 2006, “Ockham’s Metaphysics of Parts”, Journal of Philosophy 103, 737-754. Rescher Nicholas, 1955, “Axioms for the Part Relation”, Philosophical Studies 6, 8-11. Simons Peter, 1987, Parts: A Study in Ontology, Oxford: University Press. — 1994, “Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54, 553-575. van Cleve J., 1990, “Emergence vs. Panpsychism: Magic or Mind Dust?”, Philosophical Perspectives 4, 215-226. van Inwagen Peter, 1986, “When Are Objects Parts?”, Philosophical Perspectives 1, 21- 47. — 2001, “Composition as Identity”, in Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics, Cambridge: University Press, 95-110. — 2006, “Can Mereological Sums Change Their Parts?”, Journal of Philosophy 103, 614- 630. Varzi Achille, 2000, “Mereological Commitments”, Dialectica 54, 283-305. — 2008, “The Extensionality of Parthood and Composition”, Philosophical Quarterly 58, 108-133.
59 Arete
60