Coincidence under a Sortal

Philosophical Review

Volumn 105, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 145-171

  Oderberg, David S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 54849266800     PISSN: 00318108     EISSN: 15581470     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2185716     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. It should be noted that the 'can' being employed here is the 'can' of metaphysical possibility. The mere physical impossibility of a certain sort of coincidence neither counts against (i) or (ii) nor supports (iii), though of course physical possibility entails metaphysical possibility, and would therefore support (i) or (ii), or refute (iii).
2. D. Wiggins, "On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time," Philosophical Review 77 (1968): 90-95.
3. The obvious move against this case is to say that there is no true coincidence: the water forces apart the sponge fibres, with the result that there is in fact no water where there is sponge and no sponge where there is water, though both sponge and water occupy subregions in three-dimensional space of a region defined, say, by the surface molecules of the sponge and water mass. This seems to be what actually happens, but one can imagine a very similar world in which spatial separateness at the microscopic (perhaps even subatomic) levels was less evident; in other words, coincidence in this case does not seem more than physically impossible. Further, it might be thought (E.J. Lowe, "Substance, Identity and Time," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol.62 (1988): 61-78, at 66-67
4. that to regard such a case as failing to refute the thesis for the reason just mentioned would lead to the discounting of plausible cases of coincidence. Couldn't there be, either actually or in a world similar to ours, some stuff that was such that portions of it could easily mix together macroscopically, while the atomic constituents of each portion remained stubbornly separate, so that two portions could, after commingling, easily be retrieved atomic part by atomic part? Wiggins, On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time 90.) This is slightly more complicated, though, and we shall come back to it.
5. Though not flakes of gold, as suggested, since gold atoms are not pieces of gold; they are parts not in the sense of pieces but in the sense of constituents.
6. This is said modulo the overarching and wholly general problem of vagueness.
7. This is not to say that the individuation conditions for symphonies are easy to spell out, which reflection demonstrates.
8. That is, if events are persisting things, which is disputable.
9. A fuller examination of the nature of individuation and persistence conditions is not possible here, and is unnecessary for the present discussion. The reader is referred to Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), passim.
10. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.27.1.
11. New Essays on Human Understanding, 2.27.1.
12. J. M. Shorter, "On Coinciding in Space and Time," Philosophy 52 (1977): 399-408, at 402.
13. Wiggins,"On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time."
14. P. Simons, "Coincidence of Things of a Kind," Mind 94 (1985): 70-75
15. "Unkindly Coincidences," Mind 95 (1986): 506-509
16. Simons, Parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press1987),224
17. and also Unkindly Coincidences." Replies to Simons came from, among others, H. Noonan, "Reply to Simons on Coincidence," Mind 95 (1986): 100-104
18. F. Doepke, "In Defence of Locke's Principle: A Reply to Peter M. Simons," Mind 95 (1986): 238-241
19. It is somewhat surprising that Noonan and Doepke should have sought to refute Simons, since the former is sympathetic to the idea that the Substance Thesis might be false in general, and thinks it in fact false for persons (Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 1989)), and the latter thinks it false for substances such as tables ("Spatially Coinciding Objects," Ratio 24 (1982): 45-60, at 51).
20. Parts 224
21. "Coincidence of Things of a Kind 73
22. Coincidence of Things of a Kind Ibid., 74.
23. CertainIy, if the necessity of origin is true, and he must have come into existence from this sperm and egg, he must have come into existence from some sperm and egg
24. Shorter ("On Coinciding in Space and Time") thinks that it is merely empirically impossible (if impossible at all) that self-organizing" objects with very different internal structures could coincide, since the "compromise" structure resulting from the merger would not be viable. But this ignores the metaphysical problem. Objects with very different internal structures might or might not be able to merge and give rise to viable intermediate structures, but no such merger could in principle give rise to anything that looked like the genuine coincidence of distinct objects. Only a virtual identity of internal structure would allow a merger at all but the atomic level, but the resulting structure, as viable as it might be, would preclude individuation
25. For the bare cross-world identity problem, see, further, Simons, Parts, 225-226
26. Composite ones, at least.
27. Note that it would not be enough to deny mereological essentialism while holding that the puddles still retain their constituents across the merger as a matter of contingent fact, since this would be merely to stipulate coincidence, rather than to offer a reason for thinking that the constituents had been retained. A similar stipulative move is made in Shorter, On Coinciding in Space and Time at 404
28. See, further, my The Metaphysics of Identity over Time (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), chap. 7.
29. Discussions of fission abound, but the reader is referred to Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), chap. 12, for a well-known and provocative account.
30. Supporters of the thesis (though their accounts have important differences) include Eugene Mills, "Dividing without Reducing: Bodily Fission and Personal Identity," Mind 102 (1993): 37-51
31. Harold Noonan, Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 1989)
32. David Lewis, "Survival and Identity," in his Philosophical Papers, vol.1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 55-77
33. John Perry, "Can the Self Divide?" Journal of Philosophy 73 (1972): 483-88.
34. See also Denis Robinson, "Can Amoebae Divide without Multiplying?" Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy 63 (1985): 299-319, though he does not explicidy apply his account to persons.
35. MilIs, "Dividing without Reducing," at 41, following Parfit's criticism of Lewis in "Lewis, Perry and What Matters," in The Identities of Persons, ed. A. Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 91-107. Page references in the text through the remainder of this section are to Mills's article.
36. It might be thought that there are obvious counterexamples to this claim. Consider the case of A who orders B to kill C: is not A responsible for the killing, though he did not carry it out? Once we analyze the case, however, we can see that it is not a counterexample. There are at least two plausible interpretations of the object of A's responsibility. On either reading A and B are necessary elements of the total cause of C's death, as surely as if A and B had both bludgeoned C to death, or shot at him simultaneously: in this case, B would not have acted without A's order, and A would not have made the order had B not been prepared to carry it out. On the first and most plausible reading, A is as much a killer as B, and it is not that A is responsible for B's part of the crime, namely, the carrying out of the order; rather, A is responsible for his part of the crime, which is the giving of the death-dealing order in the first place. On the second and less plausible reading, A is guilty not of killing per se, but of something like inciting a killing; but again, A is only responsible for his act, namely the incitement, not for B's act, namely the reaction to the incitement. Furthermore, nothing in the criminal law entails that A is responsible for what B does in such a case, as opposed to his own contribution to C's death.
37. Here I am indebted to Sean Hall for the terms 'quasi-responsibility' and 'quasi-morality', and for stimulating discussions on the wholesale revisions to morality inherent in reductionism.
38. further elaboration see my The Metaphysics of Identity Over Time.
39. On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time.
40. Wiggins, 93. Note that Wiggins's vague use of 'particular' ought to lead him even to reject the Simple Coincidence Thesis, which he does not. So his formulation ought to have been more restrictive-which threatens to render it less plausible.
41. Versions of this paper were read at St. David's University College Lampeter, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Reading staff/ student seminar. I am grateful for the very helpful comments received from participants at those meetings, and to two anonymous referees for the Philosophical Review whose detailed comments have greatly improved the content of this paper.