Ontological Vagueness, Existence Monism and Metaphysical Realism
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Ontological Vagueness, Existence Monism and Metaphysical Realism E. J. Lowe
# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Recently, Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč have defended the thesis of ‘existence monism’, according to which the whole cosmos is the only concrete object. Their arguments appeal largely to considerations concerning vagueness. Crucially, they claim that ontological vagueness is impossible, and one key assumption in their defence of this claim is that vagueness always involves ‘sorites-susceptibility’. I aim to challenge both the claim and this assumption. As a consequence, I seek to undermine their defence of existence monism and support a common-sense pluralist ontology of ‘ordinary objects’ as being fully consistent with a thoroughgoing metaphysical realism. Keywords Concrete objects . Existence monism . Metaphysical realism . Ontological vagueness . Sorites paradoxes In ‘Monism: The Priority of the Whole’ (Schaffer 2010), Jonathan Schaffer draws an important and often overlooked distinction between priority monism and existence monism, the former holding that where concrete objects are concerned, the whole cosmos of which they are parts is ontologically prior to those parts, whereas the latter holds that the whole cosmos is the only concrete object. Thus, priority monism doesn’t deny that the whole cosmos has parts, in the form of lesser concrete objects, only that any of these parts is ontologically prior, or even equal in respect of its ontological status, to the cosmos as a whole. Clearly, then, existence monism—defended by Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč in their ‘Existence Monism Trumps Priority Monism’ (Horgan and Potrč 2012, but see also Horgan and Potrč 2008)—is the more extreme doctrine and must fail if priority monism fails in favour of a pluralism which denies the priority of the whole. My own view is that priority monism does indeed so fail, although I shall not attack Schaffer’s arguments in support of it here. Rather, I shall restrict myself for present purposes to examining E. J. Lowe (*) Department of Philosophy, Durham University, 50 Old Elvet, Durham Dh1 3HN, UK e-mail: [email protected]
E.J. Lowe
and criticising Horgan and Potrč’s arguments in favour of existence monism, which appeal largely to considerations concerning vagueness. I believe that these too fail, in virtue of making certain key assumptions which are, in my view, unwarranted. More generally, though, it is my opinion that arguments from vagueness are almost never to be trusted in metaphysics, particularly when, as so often happens, they lead to highly counterintuitive conclusions. In short, it is almost always preferable, when arguing for a position in metaphysics, to develop an argument which does not appeal to vagueness rather than to one that does. Apart from anything else, arguments appealing to vagueness almost never convince an opponent—they almost always lack persuasive power—because opponents always suspect them, generally rightly, of involving some sort of sleight of hand. In any case,
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