Dignity, ecosystems and artifacts

1. If a part of x has dignity, x has dignity.

2. Only persons have dignity.

3. So, a person cannot be a proper part of a non-person. (1–2)

4. A person cannot be a proper part of a person.

5. So, a person cannot be a proper part of anything. (3–4)

6. If any nation or galaxy or ecosystem exists, some nation, galaxy or ecosystem has a person as a proper part.

7. So, no nation, galaxy or ecosystem exists. (5–6)

Less confidently, I go on.

8. If tables and chairs exist, so do chess sets.

9. If chess sets exist, so do living chess sets.

10. A living chess set has persons as proper parts. (Definition)

11. So, living chess sets do not exist. (4,10)

12. So, tables and chairs don’t exist. (8–9,11)

All that said, I suppose (1) could be denied. But it would be hard to deny if one thought of dignity as a form of trumping value, since a value in a part transfers to the whole, and if it’s a trumping value, it isn’t canceled by the disvalue of other parts. (That said, I myself don’t quite think of dignity as a form of value.)

Pairs

As a warmup to his arguments against the existence of ordinary objects, Trenton Merricks argues against the existence of pairs of gloves.

Here’s another argument against pairs of gloves. I recently bought a pack of 200 nitrile gloves. How many pairs am I buying? Intuitively, there were a hundred pairs in the box. But if so, then we have have an odd question: For which distinct gloves of x and y in the box, do x and y in the box constitute a pair? If they all do, then there are 200⋅199/2 = 19,900 pairs in the box, while sure we would feel ripped off if the box said “19,900 pairs”.

Well, we might say this, starting at the top of the box: the first and second gloves are a pair, the third and fourth are a pair, and so on. But now suppose that something went wrong in the packing, and only 199 gloves went into the box (maybe that actually happened—I didn’t count). Then the box has 49 pairs, plus one more glove. But which of the gloves is the extra? Is it the bottom one, the top one, or some one in the middle? There seems to be no answer here.

Moreover, sometimes I only use one glove at a time. If so, then there is a 50% chance that at this point the next two gloves from the box that I put on aren’t actually a pair, and so when I put them on, I am not actually putting on a pair of gloves.

Perhaps, you say, all these difficulties stem from the fact that nitrile gloves do not have a left and right distinction. But suppose they did, and I got sent a messy box with 100 left gloves and 100 right gloves. Now, if every left glove and every right glove make a pair, there are 100⋅100 = 10,000 pairs, but it would be clearly a rip-off to label the box “10,000 pairs”: clearly, there would be 100 pairs. But now we would once again have the insuperable question of which left glove with which right glove makes a pair.

Maybe the problem disappears if one buys things by the single pair, as the “true pairs” are the ones one buys? I doubt it. If you saw me walking around today, you’d have said I was wearing a pair of black running shoes. But what happened was this: Some years back, I bought a pair of running shoes. The stitching on the right shoe gave out all too soon, and I patched it with a punctured bike inner tube (I save inner tubes that are themselves too far gone to keep patching, as they are useful for various projects), and wore it for another couple of months, but eventually gave in and got a second pair of the same make, model, size and color. After a year or two, I noticed that the left shoe on my newer pair was now more worn than the left shoe on my older pair (I didn’t throw the first pair out). And you can guess what I did: I started wearing the right shoe from the newer pair with the left shoe from the older pair. And that’s what I was wearing today. So, if the true pairs are as purchased, you would have been objectively wrong if you thought you saw me wearing a pair of shoes today: I was wearing two half-pairs. But this is absurd.

One might say: shoes become a pair when customarily worn together. But how many days do I need to wear them together for them to become a pair? And what if I bought two pairs of shoes of the same sort, and every morning randomly chose which left one and which right one to wear?

Perhaps the problems afflicting pairs don’t afflict more tightly bound artifacts. But I suspect it’s largely just a difference in vividness of the problem.

More on artifacts and intentions

Yesterday, I showed that an artifact’s function wasn’t defined by the maker’s intention that it be used for that function. For instance, a historical weapons recreationist might make a halberd without intending that it kill anyone, even though killing is the function of the halberd, and we might make a nuclear weapon without intending that it kill, but only for deterrent—and yet, once again, killing is the function of the weapon.

Here is an account that occurred to me this morning:

1. An artifact x has a function F iff x was intentionally made or designed in order to be capable of fulfilling F, and the maker and designer were sufficiently successful.

This takes care of my two above examples. The recreated halberd and the deterrent weapon are both made not to kill, but to be capable of killing.

There is a lot of vagueness in the “sufficiently successful”, and it’s meant to match the vagueness of our usage of artifactual vocabulary. There really is vagueness in how sharp something made to serve the functions of a knife has to be to be a knife. If it’s too far from sharpness, it’s at best a knife blank.

Here is my best attempt at a counterexample to (1). You hire a blacksmith to make a letter opener, but you ask for it to be sharp enough that it could be used as a scalpel (bad idea!). The resulting letter opener is made to be capable of the functions of a scalpel, but perhaps it isn’t a scalpel. Here I don’t know what to say. I think the defender of (1) could bite the bullet and say that you hired a blacksmith to make a dual function letter-opener / scalpel.

Artifacts and intentions

Artifacts have defining functions. It is tempting to think of these functions as coming from their maker’s intention that they be used for those functions. But that is actually incorrect. Modern-day blacksmiths routinely make weapons of war such as swords and halberds (cf. the Forged with Fire TV show), with no intention that the weapons ever be used against anyone. Yet these are real weapons, not mere props. Similarly, it is quite possible to make a nuclear bomb with the intention that it deter war and never explode.

Maybe we could say this: There are two ways in which an artifact can be connected with its function F:

1. By being made to fulfill F

2. By being made to be physically just like something that is would be made to fulfill F.

But that’s not correct. Suppose that upon looking at a fork, I come to realize that something physically indistinguishable from it would make a great backscratcher. I then go to a forge and make a backscratcher that is just like the fork. What I made isn’t a fork but a backscratcher, even though I made it to be physically just like something that would be made to fulfill the functions of a fork.

One can try various other similar definitions. Maybe an artifact with function F is something made such that it could be used for F? But that fails, too. I could order a fork from a blacksmith and explain the desired shape of fork I want by saying that it could be comfortably used as a backscratcher—but it’ll still be a fork.

It now seems very appealing to say:

3. A smith makes a fork if and only if the smith makes something with the intention that it be a fork and is sufficiently successful in the design and execution.

But of course this can’t define what a fork is: there is too much circularity here.

I also find it appealing to say that really there are no forks, just particles arranged forkwise. But that doesn’t solve the problem. For we still want to know what it is for the particles to be arranged forkwise rather than backscratcherwise, and this seems to depend on something about how the item is thought of or what it is intended for. Maybe it makes the problem seem less urgent, though?

Yet another argument against artifacts

1. If any complex artifacts really exist, instruments of torture really exist.

2. Instruments of torture are essentially evil.

3. Nothing that is essentially evil really exists.

4. So, instruments of torture do not really exist. (2 and 3)

5. So, no complex artifacts really exist. (1 and 4)

One argument for (3) is from the privation theory of evil.

Another is a direct argument from theism:

6. Everything that really exists is created by God.

7. Nothing created by God is essentially evil.

8. So, nothing that is essentially evil really exists.

An omnipotence principle from Aquinas

Aquinas believes that it follows from omnipotence that:

1. Any being that depends on creatures can be created by God without its depending on creatures.

But, plausibly:

2. If x and y are a couple z, then z depends on x and y.

3. If x and y are a couple z, then necessarily if z exists, z depends on x and y.

4. Jill and Joe Biden are a couple.

5. Jill and Joe Biden are creatures.

But this leads to a contradiction. By (4), we have a couple, call it “the Bidens”, consisting by Jill and Joe Biden, and by (2) that couple depends on Jill and Joe Biden. By (1) and (5), God can create the Bidens without either Jill or Joe Biden. But that contradicts (3).

So, Aquinas’ principle (1) implies that there are no couples. More generally, it implies that there are no beings that necessarily depend on other creatures. All our artifacts would be like that: they would depend on parts. Thus, Aquinas’ principle implies there are no artifacts.

Thomists are sometimes tempted to say that artifacts, heaps and the like are accidental beings. But the above argument shows that that won’t do. God’s power extends to all being, and whatever being creatures can bestow, God can bestow absent the creatures. If the accidental beings are beings, God can create them without their parts. But a universe with a heap and yet nothing heaped is absurd. So, I think, we need to deny the existence of accidental beings.

If we lean on (1) further, we get an argument for survivalism. Either Socrates depends on his body or not. If Socrates does not depend on his body, he can surely survive without his body after death. But if Socrates does depend on his body, then by (1) God can create Socrates disembodied, since Socrates’ body is a creature. But if God can create Socrates disembodied, surely God can sustain Socrates disembodied, and so Socrates can survive without his body. In fact, the argument does not apply merely to humans but to every embodied being: bacteria, trees and wolves can all survive death if God so pleases.

Things get even stranger once we get to the compositional structure of substances. Socrates presumably depends on his act of being. But Socrates’ act of being is itself a creature. Thus, by (1), God could create Socrates without creating Socrates’ act of being. Then Socrates would exist without having any existence.

I like the sound of (1), but the last conclusion seems disastrous. Perhaps, though, the lesson we get from this is that the esse of Socrates isn’t an entity? Or perhaps we need to reject (1)?

The Hermes in the marble

A substance’s existence does not ontologically depend on the state of anything beyond the substance. But a typical artifact depends on absences of materials beyond itself. A classic example is a statue that comes into existence when the surrounding marble is removed. The statue’s existence is grounded in part in the absence of the surrounding marble. Similarly, even if a knife blade is made by forging rather than by removal of material, one can destroy the blade by encasing it in a block of steel: the existence of the knife is grounded in part in the absence of surrounding steel.

Thus, it seems, typical artifacts are not substances.

But this argument was too quick. What if the laws of nature are such that the following is true? When the sculptor chips away the surrounding marble to make the Hermes, a non-physical component, a form, of the Hermes comes into existence. That form is united with the Hermes’ matter. And what makes the statue be itself is not the absence of surrounding matter, but the presence of the form. It may be that by the laws of nature the form only comes into existence as a result of the removal of material, but it would be logically possible for the form to come into existence without any removal: the statue causally but not ontologically depends on the absence of surrounding material. God could make the statue within the block of marble, without any removal of material, simply by creating a form for a Hermes-arranged subset of marble molecules.

(One could also have a non-Aristotelian version of this account in terms of Markosian’s brute theory of composition.)

I think the above Aristotelian story is implausible. One reason is that the story conflicts with our intuitions as to the survival conditions for artifacts. A statue is essentially a statue. But the Hermes-shaped bundle of atoms in the block marble, even if distinguished by a metaphysical union with a form, are not a statue. Maybe God could make a form for these atoms, but it wouldn’t be the form of an artifact.

Artifacts and non-naturalism

One of the reasons to be suspicious of artifacts is that it seems magical to think we have the power to create a new object just by thinking about things a certain way while manipulating stuff. If Bob gets some clay and exercise his fingers by randomly kneading it, he doesn’t make a sculpture or any other new object out of it. But if his identical twin Carl intends to shape the clay into a sculpture, and in doing so moves his fingers in exactly the same way that Bob did, and produces exactly the same shape, then—assuming artifacts exist—he creates a new object, a sculpture. It seems magical that our thoughts should affect what object exists in the world, even when the thoughts make no difference to our manipulation of the world.

When I discussed arguments with this in my Mid-Sized Objects graduate seminar, I found, however, that there was a lot of friendliness towards the view that, yes, we are capable of this magic, though some demurred at the word “magic”. And in particular, a student pointed out that we are in the image of a God who can create.

This has made me think that a non-naturalist can think that our thoughts have effects that are not screened by the movements of our bodies. Thus, it could well be that Carl’s thoughts causes the world to be different. For instance, on a hylomorphic view, Carl could have the power to create a scu;tural form for a piece of clay by his thoughts. Or on a variant of Markosian’s brute composition view, Carl could have the power simply to cause a new object composed of the clay.

In fact, this suggests an interesting new argument against physicalism, where physicalism is understood as the claim that all causal powers reduce to those of physics. Intuitively, the correct ontology includes more things than van Inwagen’s ontology of particles and organisms and but not all the things from the mereological universalist’s bloated ontology. In particular, intuitively, the correct ontology does include Carl’s new sculpture, but Bob hasn’t produced anything new, and hence the correct ontology seems to require a non-natural “magical” power over composition facts to be found in Carl’s (and presumably, albeit in this context unexercised, Bob’s) mind. And if our ontology is to include, as common-sense would suggest, galaxies, planets, mountains and rocks, we need powers in things to produce such objects—i.e., to ensure that their particulate parts do compose something—and these powers are not to be found in physics.

Markosian’s apparently preferred version of the brute composition view can almost accommodate this. On that version, the composition facts supervene on the arrangement of particles: there are infinitely many necessary truths that specify which arrangements of particles compose. But these necessary truths would include lots of arbitrary parameters (e.g., encoding the difference between some stones that are just lying there and a hillock). We don’t want necessary truths with arbitrary parameters. It is much better if any such arbitrary parameters are relocated to the laws of nature or, better, the causal powers of things.

Creation and artifacts

Analytic metaphysics is widely thought a dry discipline. I want to show how it could be used to connect with some deeply devotional theological claims.

Here is a valid argument:

1. If artifacts exist, we created them.

2. Only God creates.

3. So, artifacts don’t exist.

This argument suggests that there can be a deeply devotional connection to the arguments of those metaphysicians, like Merricks and van Inwagen, who deny the existence of artifacts.

Here is another devotional line of thought towards this. Some radical theologians say that God doesn’t exist. They do this to emphasize the radical difference between God and creatures. But they do so wrong. The right way to emphasize this difference is to say that we don’t exist. (Recall how God is said to have told St. Catherine of Siena: “I am he who is and you are she who is not.”) Only God exists.

So, the things that God creates don’t exist—at least not in the same sense in which God exists. By analogy, it should be no surprise if the things we make don’t exist—at least not in the same sense that we exist.

Objection 1: We can create organisms in the lab, and organisms surely exist.

Response: Maybe we should say that their life comes from God.

Objection 2: The distinction between God’s creating and our making is sufficiently accounted for by noting that God creates ex nihilo and we make things out of preexistent stuff.

Response: God doesn’t always create ex nihilo. He made Adam out of the dust of the earth. And anyway the more differences we see between God and us, the more God’s transcendence is glorified.

Artifacts, Aristotelianism and naturalism

One of the main reasons I don’t believe in (complex) artifacts is that the existence of an artifact would have to depend on our intentions. Whether some stones make up a sculpture depends on whether they were piled with the intention of making a sculpture or just tossed in a heap to provide raw materials. And it is incredible that just because one thinks about something in a particular way while executing a series of physical actions, a material object comes into being, and if one doesn’t think in this way, but executes the same series of physical actions, there are just raw materials in a heap rather than a thing. This just seems like magic.

It has, however, just occurred to me that I may have been thinking too much like a naturalist. We human beings already have a broad array of amazing non-natural powers. By promising, I create an obligation for myself, and by requesting, I create a reason for you. By reproducing, two humans produce a new thinking being. Why couldn’t human beings (and perhaps other tool-using animals) also be gifted with the basic power to create a form for a bunch of physical objects, a power which they exercise by executing some physical movements with particular intentions, much as I change my own normative status by using my vocal chords with particular intentions?

That our intentions should affect what material objects there are is also a bit less magical when one has an Aristotelian ontology. For on an Aristotelian ontology, “material objects” are not purely material: they have immaterial form. Yes, all this is a bit magical. But on Aristotelian ontology, all beings are a little magical, and we are especially so, being minded.

That said, I still find it hard to believe that we can create artifacts.

But all this suggests an interesting argument against naturalism:

1. We can bring complex artifacts into existence.

2. Mereological universalism is false.

3. If naturalism is true, we can bring complex artifacts into existence if and only if mereological universalism is true.

4. So, naturalism is not true.

But I am still not sure (1) is true.

I saw the ship of Theseus in Vancouver

Evil artifacts

Short version of my argument: Artifacts can be evil, but nothing existent can be evil, so artifacts do not exist.

Long version:

1. Paradigmatic instruments of torture are evil.

2. Nothing that exists is evil.

3. So, paradigmatic instruments of torture do not exist.

4. All non-living complex artifacts are ontologically on par.

5. Paradigmatic instruments of torture are inorganic complex artifacts.

6. So, non-living complex artifacts do not exist.

The argument for 1 is that paradigmatic instruments of torture are defined in part by their function, which function is evil.

The argument for 2 is:

7. Everything that exists is either God or created by God.

8. God is not evil.

9. Nothing created by God is evil.

10. So, nothing that exists is evil.

I think 4 is very plausible, and 5 is uncontroversial.

(My argument nihilism about artifacts is inspired by a rather different but also interesting theistic argument for the same conclusion that Trent Dougherty just sent me, but his argument did not talk of evil.)

Disembodied trees

Here’s an interesting thesis:

1. If x has the ys among its parts, and for each z among the ys, x can survive losing z without gaining anything, then x can survive simultaneously losing all the ys without gaining anything.

There are obvious apparent counterexamples. A boat that has sufficient redundancy can survive the loss of any plank, but cannot survive losing them all. An oak tree can lose any cell but cannot lose all cells.

But counterexamples aside, wouldn’t (1) be a nice metaphysical thesis to have? Then essential parts wouldn’t be made of inessential ones. You can see all the nasty ship-of-Theseus questions that would disappear if we had (1).

I think an Aristotelian can embrace (1), and can get around the counterexamples by biting some big bullets. First, like some contemporary Aristotelians, she can deny that artifacts like boats (or bullets) exist. Second, she can say that oak trees can survive the loss of all their matter, becoming constituted by form alone, much as some philosophers say happens to human beings after death (before the resurrection). The second part seems a bigger bullet to bite, as one would need a story as to why in fact oak trees perish when they lose all their cells, even if they don’t have to. But perhaps that’s just contingently how it happens, though an all powerful being could make an oak tree survive the destruction of all its cells.

The big question here is exactly what philosophical advantages embracing (1) has.

AI and ontology

1. Only things that exist think.

2. Only simples and living things exist. (Cf. van Inwagen and Aristotle.)

3. Computers are neither simple nor alive.

4. So, computers don’t think.

Short laptop desk made from two Ikea Lack side tables

I wanted a shortish laptop desk for use while sitting on the sofa.  Ikea had Lack tables on sale for five dollars.  I bought two and made this little table with a shelf out of them.  My instructions for the build are here.

As always in such things, there are fun metaphysics questions to ask.  I first built an ordinary Lack table out of one of the two kits I bought.  I used it for a couple of days to figure out the height I wanted for the final table (I tried putting a Settlers of Catan box on it, and the laptop on that--too high--and I tried putting a second Lack tabletop on it--just right).  Then I built the new table.  Now imagine that I proceeded as follows (I didn't--I used the legs from the other kit instead, as it happened).  After building the original table, I cut segments off the bottoms of the legs, thereby shortening the legs.  That wouldn't destroy my table, surely.  I would just have a table with shorter legs.  I then attach the segments to the second tabletop, and then glue that on top of the first.  Would I still have the same table as I started with, albeit no longer a Lack table, even though the tabletop of the first table had become a shelf?  What if instead the tabletop of the first table become the top of the new table?  That would require more disassembly, though. 

Also, although that's not how I did it, I could have started with two pre-made Lack tables, shortened the legs of one, and glued it on top of the other.  Would the two tables have been destroyed, replaced by table parts?  Would the two tables have continued to exist, but now being mere table parts instead of tables?  Or would the two tables have continued to exist, and to be tables, but they would now be a part of a new, third table, giving yet another counterexample (besides, say, Richard Gale's doggy door) to the principle that no object of a kind K can be a proper part of an object of kind K?  Would it make a difference if they were joined by Velcro instead of glue?  It would be odd if the exact choice of fasteners mattered.

Would it matter whether I used them separately?  Or hoped to do so but never did?

There are also fun metaphysics questions to ask about the parts which came in the Ikea box.  It is very natural to say that those parts in the box are the parts of a Lack table.  But what if they are never assembled?  Does that mean that the Lack table exists in the box, albeit in disassembled form?  What if I build two ordinary Lack tables, but mix up the parts and screw on the legs from each set into the tabletop from the other set?  Are there now four tables, two in disassembled form (that they are screwed into each other--Lack tables normally only use four double-sided screws to put together, and the legs can be easily untwisted from the top) and two new ones assembled?  That doesn't sound right.  So maybe the kit contains the parts for a Lack table, but the parts of a Lack table only if a Lack table is later made precisely of them.

All these questions are fun, but in Sider's sense they are non-substantive.  But questions about existence and identity are substantive.  I conclude that I made no tables.  (Obviously, I've switched from carpentry language to metaphysics language somewhere in the post.)  I just rearranged some fields or particles.

Two legs, four legs and the Incarnation

In this picture from 30 Rock's "Brooklyn Without Limits" episode, Kenneth has only two legs and yet Kenneth has four legs. This sounds like a contradiction, but of course it is not--we can see that it's not.

How shall we resolve the contradiction? Perhaps: Kenneth has two human legs and four table legs. But that suggests that Kenneth has six legs, and that doesn't seem right to say. Maybe we can say that his human legs are also table legs, so he has only four legs: two of them doing double-duty for table legs and human legs, and two of them doing double-duty for table legs and human arms. Maybe. But even the statement "Kenneth has four legs" seems wrong or at least misleading without qualification.

Much better to qualify with a qua: Kenneth qua human has only two legs. Kenneth qua table has four legs.

This should remind us of one of the standard solutions to apparently contradictory talk of Christ incarnate. Christ is eternal. Christ is conceived in time. Christ has boundless knowledge. Christ's knowledge is bounded. And so on. The solution is to say things like: Christ qua God is eternal and has boundless knowledge. Christ qua human is conceived in time and has bounded knowledge--and has two legs.

The naturalness of qua talk in the case of Kenneth should make us less suspicious of the incarnational case.

Artifacts made of holodeck matter

Suppose that I had a small single-room apartment, and a set of Star Trek style holoemitters which can generate shaped and colored force fields that simulate objects for the purposes of both sight and touch. I could then with a simple verbal command transform my room from a bedroom, complete with bed, bedding and bedside table, to a kitchen with all the appurtanances, to a well-appointed bathroom, to a cozy library, to a living room with as much soft, cushy furniture as would fit. The furniture would be fully usable.

Now, suppose I went to Ikea and bought a lovely new set of sofa designs and uploaded them to my holoemitter. Shouldn't I say that at this very point, when I uploaded the sofa designs, I had a new sofa? If so, then sofas aren't essentially material objects. For my new sofa would, until projected, exist only as a configuring of the memory system of the holoemitter computer. Of course, after activating the sofa projection, the force fields in my room would be sofa-shaped. But they no more would be the sofa than the arrangements of pixels on the screen are identical with the electronic book that I purchased (even in the special case that the book is only one screen long). The fields would manifest the sofa and would at most be part of it.

But perhaps one can resist the above. Maybe I have no new sofa until I project it, and it is the shaped force fields that make up the sofa. But now notice that the sofa can be turned off and then turned back on. There is presumably no numerical identity in the force fields making up the sofa on successive activations. Yet it sure seems plausible to say that it's the same sofa. (We could even have the holoemitter store data on acquired characteristics like dents and scratches.) Suppose we deny that. Then we can still ask: Why is it the same sofa from millisecond to millisecond, when it hasn't been turned off? After all, during every millisecond it is entirely produced by the holoemitter. It has no "existential inertia" (this is not so clear in the Star Trek canon, but I stipulate thus). Yet it would be weird to say that I have had thousands, or maybe even infinitely many, sofas in a single second. But what if I hack the holoemitter to emit two copies of the sofa for a big party, thereby illegally circumventing my sofa license from Ikea? Which of the two sofas being projected will be the sofa I had the day before? There just is no answer to that question.

I think that the more we think about such science fictional scenarios, the more we destabilize our concept of an artifact. And this gives more plausibility to the thought that there really are no such things as artifacts. There is just stuff (force fields, particles, memory systems) arranged artefactually, stuff that serves as sofas, computers and chairs. And we talk as if there are artifacts. But within minutes we would talk in the same way of the holofurniture!

But one might also take this approach to give plausibility to a less radical solution, namely Rob Koons' theory that artifacts are particularized social practices. There will still be tough questions with counting, though. If I buy two sofa licenses from Ikea, the holoprojector computer might not keep two separate copies of the sofa design files. It might much more efficiently store a single copy of the sofa design files with a note that I am permitted two simultaneous manifestations. It seems more plausible that there is a single particular social practice—the pair-of-sofas practice—or two practices, one per sofa. But what if I initially bought a single sofa license from Ikea, and later bought a second license. Did I lose the first sofa, and gain a pair-of-sofas?

Two thoughts on theologians who say "God does not exist"

Some theologians like to say that God does not exist. They say this to mark the radical difference between God and creatures.

1. If one is going to say such things, a more helpful way to speak would be: "God exists but we don't." For that would still get across the radical difference between God and creatures, but get right the fact that God is the one who is the more real. Compared to God's reality, we are but shadows. It is said that God said to St Catherine of Siena: "I am who I am, and you are she who is not." This poetically conveys a deep truth. We are but shadows, and "shadow" is often an overstatement.

2. There are many metaphysicians who like to say that complex artifacts like tables, chairs and blowguns don't exist. But many of them say this only in philosophical contexts and not in "ordinary" contexts, or they qualify the "don't exist" with a "really". They may or may not be misguided in the form of their odd denial, but what they (we!) are getting at is plausible: There is a deep difference between the kind of being that a table, chair or blowgun has, and the kind of being that a horse or a photon have (some of these philosophers will class the horse with the chair; that's mistaken, but the basic point I am making isn't affected). The ordinary language sentences "The pig exists" and "The car exists" have very different (nonpropositional) grounds: the former is grounded in a single thing while the latter is grounded in the arrangement of many things. Well, these theologians, like these metaphysicians, are also impressed by a deep ontological difference (a deeper one, perhaps). But like the metaphysician who is willing to speak with nonphilosophers in ordinary ways, these theologians should be willing to say "God exists" in contexts of ordinary worship. Or like the metaphysician who says that computers don't really exist, she could simply make a qualification: "God doesn't exist in the shadowy way." Or, more perspicuously?, she could say: "We don't really exist, but God does." (Though I think that if one does that, one should also distinguish us from artifacts. Perhaps the distinction could be marked with "really" and "really really"!)

"Using as"

I can use a fork as a backscratcher or my thumb and forefinger as the prongs of a slingshot.

I claim that when I do so, there isn't a backscratcher or a set of prongs that comes into existence when I do so.

For consider the three possibilities on which it is correct to say that prongs come into existence:

1. The thumb and forefinger cease to exist and prongs come into existence, made out of the former digits.
2. A set of prongs comes into existence in exactly the space occupied by the thumb and forefinger, and are made out of the same matter as the prongs.
3. The thumb and forefinger are both a thumb and forefinger and a pair of prongs after the transformation.

The first option is obviously false.  I didn't temporarily come to have only eight fingers when I did it for the purposes of the photo.

The second option doesn't match the how we talk.  I would say: "I used my fingers as the prongs of a slingshot."  But according to (2), I had the prongs of a slingshot right there in the very same region of space occupied by my fingers--why didn't I use them as the prongs of a slingshot, since they are surely at least as usable for that purpose.  Or did I use both my digits and the prongs as prongs?  But I need only two things for slingshot prongs, not four.

Moreover, as I am typing with both hands, surely the prongs no longer exist.  When did they cease to exist?  Right after the shot?  But when I took the picture, I didn't actually take a shot--I only used my fingers as prongs for show.  (I did take a shot on other occasions, shooting a little fuzzy ball from the kids' craft drawer.)  When I relaxed the fingers?  But why not, instead, think of the relaxed fingers as folded prongs?  A slingshot could, after all, fold.  It's not like I destroyed the prongs when I relaxed my fingers--they're ready for convenient use at any other time.  Yet if they do continue to exist, do I have forty-four other pairs of prongs on my hands (granted, 25 of the pairs--the ones with one finger from one hand and the other from the other--can only be used by having a friend pull back the pocket or by pulling the pocket back with the teeth) if I form the odd ambition to use a different pair every day for the next forty-four days?  And if the prongs ceased to exist, will the very same pair of prongs be resurrected the next time I use my thumb and forefinger as prongs?  These questions seem silly, and their silliness suggests that they are predicated on a mistake.

The third option fits better with our "use as" talk.  I used my fingers as prongs, and I used the prongs as prongs, but there aren't four things there, because the fingers were prongs.  But we get the wrong modal properties.  For suppose that I decided to reinforce the prongs by supergluing steel rods to them.  The steel rods would come to be a part of the prongs, but they wouldn't come to be a part of the fingers.  Hence the fingers are not identical with the prongs, by Leibniz's Law.  

All this fits with common sense.  I used fingers as slingshot prongs or a fork as a backscratcher, and there were no slingshot prongs or a backscratcher there.

But can this line be maintained?  Suppose I cease to use the fork as a fork, and start to use it exclusively as a backscratcher.  Suppose in our culture, everybody owns a backscratcher, as our greeting ritual is a light scratching of each other's backs.  And backscratchers look just like American forks.  Surely what I would have would be a backscratcher.  Yet, surely, whether a backscratcher comes into existence shouldn't depend on how permanently it is used as such.  Still, that seems to be how we talk.  If all we are doing is descriptive metaphysics, we may stop here.

But if we want to do more gutsy metaphysics, we might at this point question the initial intuition that I had a fork there.  Perhaps the fundamental concepts are not of backscratchers or slingshots (or prongs thereof) or even forks, but of using some thing or things (particles, say) as backscratcher, slingshot (or prongs thereof) or fork. To use as a backscratcher is like to dance a waltz--if we want to do serious metaphysics, we shouldn't ask where the token backscratcher is in the using or where the token waltz is in the dancing.

Rob Koons has defended the idea that artifacts are token social practices. What I am saying is quite similar, except that I do not want to identify the artifacts with social practices. But all the reality there is in artifacts is the reality of things used as, or meant to or designed to be used as something or other.

A cardinality argument against five-dimensional universalism

Five-dimensional universalism (hereby stipulated) holds that if f is a partially defined mapping f from worlds to regions such that (a) if f(w) is defined, then f(w) is a nonempty region of w's spacetime and (b) f(w) is nonempty for some w, there is an object O_f that exists in every world w for which f(w) is defined and occupies precisely f(w) at w. We will call a function f with the above properties a "modal profile", indeed the modal profile of O_f.

I think that to do justice to the vast flexibility of our language about artifacts, if we want to be realists about artifacts, we will need to be five-dimensional universalists. Mere four-dimensionalism mereological universalism is insufficient, because there can be always coincident artifacts with different modal properties.

But:

1. There is a set of all actual concrete objects.
2. There is no set of all modal profiles.
3. If there is no set of all modal profiles and five-dimensional universalism is true, there is no set of all actual concrete objects.
4. So, five-dimensional universalism is not true.

The argument for (2) is that there are way too many possible worlds with spacetimes to make up a set[note 1], and for each such world w there is a different modal profile[note 2], so there is no set of all modal profiles.