by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. You will find typos and other distracting mistakes, because I have not finished proofreading. Bracketed commentary is my own. Please consult the original text, as my summaries could be wrong.]
Summary of
Graham Priest
One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness
Ch.1
Gluons and Their Wicked Ways
1.5
Explaining Unity
Brief summary:
(1.5.1) One possible explanation for what a gluon (the unifying factor in something’s composition) is, is that it is the binding relationality of the thing’s internal arrangement or structure. (1.5.2) But not all relations are compositional, as for example the relation of child to a mother. (1.5.3) The relational interpretation of the gluon only makes matters worse, because it then presents a difficult metaphysical problem of explaining how something non-physical can bind physical things. (1.5.4) (The relational interpretation of the gluon also fails because the thing’s relationality only presents itself as another entity needing yet another to explain its integration in the whole, and that new binding entity would need yet another, and so on. (1.5.5) Another possible sort of account for unity is ontological dependence. One might claim that whenever the identity of the parts depends on the identity of the whole, that this very dependence itself is what accounts for the thing’s unity. But this fails as an account, because it does not yet explain how the parts cooperate to form a unity. (1.5.6) There are a lack of conventional accounts of unity. Priest will propose a new one, which will involve modifications in our notion of identity. (1.5.7) Accounts of unity that merely describe the causal processes that go into something’s generation or production, like a carpenter’s explanation of how to construct a table, satisfy to some extent the how curiosity we have for an account of unity. But they fall short for a number of reasons. {1} They do not explain the unity brought about but only the processes bringing it about. {2} They lack an explanation for what makes unifying causal processes different from non-unifying ones. And {3} they cannot explain the unity of abstract objects. (1.5.8) Thus, we do not have any easy ways to account for unity.
[The Gluon as a Relation That Binds]
[Relations as Not Necessarily Compositional]
[The Failure of the Relational Interpretation of the Gluon on Account of Metaphysical Incompatibility]
[The Failure of the Relational Interpretation of the Gluon on Account of the Bradley Regress]
[The Ontological Dependence Account of Unity and Its Failure]
[Priest’s Offer]
[The Causal Process Account of Unity and Its Failure]
[The Lack of Convenient Accounts of Unity]
Summary
[The Gluon as a Relation That Binds]
[One possible explanation for what a gluon (the unifying factor in something’s composition) is, is that it is the binding relationality of the thing’s internal arrangement or structure.]
[Previously in section 1.3.4 we discussed the notion of the gluon, which is the unifying factor in the composition of something. Priest now addresses a possible notion of how to explain the gluon. Some might say that what accounts for the unity is the “configuration, arrangement, structure” or the like of the parts. As such, this would be saying that the gluon is a relationship between the parts, and it would cast this relationship as having binding properties.]
A common thought at this point is that what accounts for the unity of the parts of an object, its gluon, is their configuration, arrangement, structure, or some such. Whatever you call it, it is a relationship between the parts, and relationships relate, | by definition. Call relationships objects if you wish; but they are a special kind of object; and they bind together the parts by their very nature.19
(11-12)
19. We are not a million miles away here from Aristotle’s proposed solution to the problem.We will look at the details of his account in Chapter 3.
(12)
[Relations as Not Necessarily Compositional]
[But not all relations are compositional, as for example the relation of child to a mother.]
Priest notes that this conception of the gluon (see section 1.5.1 above) confuses two ideas, namely, between relating and unifying. A relation by its own is not normally something that compositionally unifies what it relates. To illustrate, Priest has us consider for example the relationship of oneself being a child to one’s mother. Here the relationship does not unify the two people. [I would have expected another sort of example, given the biological and psychological bond that such a relation is thought to have. Perhaps the idea is that simply by being a mother’s child is not sufficient a bond to compose a unity of the two into one object. Deleuze when discussing Spinozistic composition gives the example of a married couple composing one composite thing. I would think that a mother-child relation would not be too far off from such a structure, but I am not sure.]
There is already a confusion at the heart of this thought –and not an uncommon one. The confusion is between relating and unifying. Relations do not, in general, unify. I am related to my mother by bearing the relationship of child to her. This may even be an internal relation (whatever, exactly, that means) – at least as far as I am concerned: I could not have been me had I not had that relation. But obviously the relation does not serve to render my mother and myself a unity in the appropriate sense.
(12)
[The Failure of the Relational Interpretation of the Gluon on Account of Metaphysical Incompatibility]
[The relational interpretation of the gluon only makes matters worse, because it then presents a difficult metaphysical problem of explaining how something non-physical can bind physical things.]
[Priest’s next point seems to be the following. The notion of the gluon as a composition-forming relation that we noted above in section 1.5.2 still construes it as an entity. As we noted, it is a different kind of entity than the thing’s parts, namely, it is a relation, and what it relates are “things” more straightforwardly understood. In our example of the house, the bricks are the things, and the gluon under this relational interpretation would be the particular relational organization of the parts on account of which the parts compose a whole house rather than a mere collection of independent bricks. Priest now says that this does not help, and his reasoning seems to be the following. The main problem lies in the fact that not only is a relation a different kind of thing than its parts, it is of such a kind that we now have yet a greater problem of understanding how it can be said to combine with those parts. His raises the mind-body problem, which stems largely from the mind being of such a different kind of thing as the body that it is very difficult to both maintain their conventional distinction while also understanding how they have the intimate relation we think them to have. So suppose we take this relational interpretation of the gluon. We now have the even greater challenge of explaining how a relation, being so very different than a part, especially a physical part, “latches-on” so to speak to the parts and binds them in their physical unity but in a way that is different from the normal physical properties and interactions we assign to the objects. To venture to put it another way, the gluon that organizes the house under this relational interpretation would need to have some sort of “sense” to it, like the houseness or house-form expressed by the bricks in their entire inter-relationality. But this sense cannot be something that is in itself physical. The mortar binding the bricks is physical, but the mortar can bind them haphazardly or under a different sense, like “wall”. The gluon however is not something physical like the mortar is. But as such, how does something not physical bind together physical things? (So as we see, our account of unity must include a notion of a binding factor, hence the gluonics. But that “binding” we seek to explain is not a physical thing but rather a principle to understand how it is that things by being so bound constitute a unity, I think. To venture a rewording, what we seek is a notion of compositional binding that accounts for unity. For, the main aspect of unity to be explained is not the oneness as much as the factor that brings the multiple parts together into a oneness.)]
Even setting aside the confusion, though, the thought still does not work. The fact that a gluon is a different kind of object does not solve the problem of unity. If anything, it simply makes it worse. Thus, what it is that joins the mind and body into a unity is a traditional and vexed problem in dualistic theories of mind. It is the very fact that they are different kinds of thing that seems to make the problem so intractable. In a similar way, suppose that it is the configuration of the bricks that binds them together to form a house. The bricks are physical objects; the configuration is, presumably, an abstract object. (Different sets of bricks can have the same configuration.) Any interaction between the bricks and the configuration would therefore seem just as problematic, perhaps even more so, as that in the mind/body case.
(12)
[The Failure of the Relational Interpretation of the Gluon on Account of the Bradley Regress]
[The relational interpretation of the gluon also fails because the thing’s relationality only presents itself as another entity needing yet another to explain its integration in the whole, and that new binding entity would need yet another, and so on.]
[Priest’s next point seems to be the following. We said in section 1.5.3 above that one problem with the relational interpretation of the gluon is that it posits an entity whose metaphysical compatibility with its parts is not easy to account for. Now we return to the Bradley regress. By positing the relationality as the binding, organizing element, we have only created another entity which calls for yet another binding entity to explain how it binds with the parts, and that new entity will need yet another, and so on. Priest may be saying something else or more, so let me quote:]
So it has to be the particular nature of the special object that is supposed to solve the problem. But how does it do so? To say that it just does do this – by its nature – is not to solve the problem; it is simply to name it. As Bradley puts it (speaking of the mind, but with considerations that apply quite generally):20
When we ask ‘What is the composition of [an object]’, we break up [that object], which comes to us as a whole, into units ... But since it is clear that these units by themselves are not all the ‘composition’, we are forced to recognize the existence of relations. But this does not stagger us. We push on with the conceptions we have brought to the work, and which of course can not be false, and we say, Oh yes, we have there more units, naturally not quite the same as the others, and – voilà tout. But when a sceptical reader, whose mind has not been warped by a different education, attempts to form an idea of what is meant, he is somewhat at a loss.
For when one invokes the object in question, one simply adds an extra element to the melange. If one is puzzled by the unity in the first case, one should be equally puzzled by the supposed unity in the second. Thus, for example, instead | of a plurality of physical parts of an object, we now have a plurality of [parts plus configuration]. Or more generally, we have the parts plus the relationship between them (or the action of the relation, or the fact that they are so related). How is this any better? This is exactly what the Bradley regress highlights.
(12-13)
20.
Bradley (1922), sect. 65. Here and throughout the book, all italics in quotations are original unless otherwise specified.
(12)
[The Ontological Dependence Account of Unity and Its Failure]
[Another possible sort of account for unity is ontological dependence. One might claim that whenever the identity of the parts depends on the identity of the whole, that this very dependence itself is what accounts for the thing’s unity. But this fails as an account, because it does not yet explain how the parts cooperate to form a unity.]
[Priest now notes another way to account for the unity of an object. I may not summarize this properly, so it is best to skip to the quotation below. But let us follow the reasoning first. We first consider a pile of stones. Now, what gives the pile of stones its identity? To be a pile of stones means first that it is a pile, and thus a pile of things, and secondly it means that what it is a pile of are stones. In other words, the identity of a pile of stones depends entirely in the identity of its parts. But what about the identity of the stones, the parts of the pile? They would have the same identity as being whatever stone they are, independently of the pile they happen to be in. Were they in another pile or lying outside a pile, they would have the same identity. Next consider some person’s body. Each body part, like a hand, has (it seems from the text) an identity related to the owner. Priest writes: “We would not have that hand unless it were part of that body.” This means that the identity of the body part (being, it seems, individualized and identifiable by means of the body it belongs to) depends on the identity of the body it is a part of. (I am not sure if the body’s identity also depends on the parts’ identities or not.) Some use this notion to explain unity. They say that this dependence of the parts’ identities on the whole’s identity is what explains the unity of the thing. (Perhaps the insight here is the following, but this is a spontaneous guess, sorry. The parts have identities. That is something fundamental to them, maybe even what is most fundamental to them. Now, what is most fundamental to the parts is not something lying within them but rather is something lying in their belonging-together to the whole. The parts as such would not even exist were they not part of that whole (or at least they would be different things altogether). So we might think then of this dependence of the parts on the whole as being a fundamental “bond” they hold with each other; for without this bond, they would not be what they are. This “bond” would seem to be some fact of their “being” or some such metaphysical concept. To put it another way, we have established that the parts’ being, identity, existence, etc. stems from their being in the particular whole they are in. But that being in some particular whole is a matter of their particular relational combination with the other parts. Thus this very dependence on the whole for identity is at the same time the inter-relative bonding dependence of the parts. I am reaching.) Priest next explains why this notion of ontological dependence does not still account for unity. He says that this account only provides a description of some feature of unified things. What it cannot do, but needs to for such an account, is to explain how the parts interrelate so to compose a unified thing. (Philosophically speaking, I find this claim striking, but perhaps it is obvious. In philosophy, when we want to give an account of something, the question we ask is how. For example, to give an account of unity, we ask, how do the parts form the whole. What sort of an answer would satisfy such how questions? In the case of unity, we will find out as we go. But I suspect that it could involve identifying structural elements and describing both the structural features they have which play a role in forming the unity and also their manner of interaction or interrelation in that formation. In other words, we might need something more of a mechanical explanation, or an account or story that tells us, how it all works.)
A quite different possibility for explaining the unity of an object is one which appeals to the notion of (ontological) dependence. Consider a pile of stones and a person’s body. The former, it might be suggested, is not a true unity; the latter is. And what makes the difference is that the identity of the pile depends on the identity of its parts, the stones; whereas in the case of the body, it is the other way around: the identity of the parts depends on the identity of the whole. (We would not have that hand unless it were part of that body.) Thus, the thought continues, what explains the oneness of a partite genuine unity is the dependence of its parts on the whole. There will be much to be said about dependence in Part III of the book. For the moment, let us grant the claims about what depends on what. Even given these, the suggestion will not work. The fact that in a unity the natures of the parts depend on the nature of the whole in no way explains how they cooperate to form a unity. For all their dependence, the parts are still parts; and facts about identity do not bear on cooperation. Granted, the parts would not be the parts they are unless they were parts of the whole. But that hardly explains how it is that the various parts do what they do to create the whole. We know, by their nature, that they are parts of that whole; but how is it that they have this nature?
(13)
21. This possibility was suggested to me by Jonathan Schaffer. It is hinted at in his (2010b).
(13)
[Priest’s Offer]
[There are a lack of conventional accounts of unity. Priest will propose a new one, which will involve modifications in our notion of identity.]
Priest now notes that unity could be one of those things that are impossible to explain and that thus we must just accept without further investigation. Priest says that we should not quit so fast, because if we are willing to modify certain concepts like identity, we can arrive upon a satisfactory account, which is what Priest will be doing.
One could, I suppose, be a quietist about the whole matter: one might just accept that one cannot provide an explanation. All one can say about the phenomenon is to aver, every time one walks past a united object, ‘there it goes again’. Perhaps one has to be a philosophical quietist about some things. But giving up without a fight is an untoward defeatism. And if a perfectly good explanation can be found, as I shall argue that it can, unwarranted. Of course, explanations always come at a cost—some kind of commitment; and the explanation I shall offer is no exception. The cost in this case is revising how it is we currently think that certain things, and especially identity, work. But such is to be expected in any conceptual advance.Thus, for several hundred years scientists had no account of how gravitational effects are transmitted. Everything has an instantaneous effect on everything else, and that is that. No explanation. Since Einstein, we now have an explanation; but the explanation has caused major revisions in our conceptions of space, time, matter. The cost of a revision may be entirely warranted.
(13)
[The Causal Process Account of Unity and Its Failure]
[Accounts of unity that merely describe the causal processes that go into something’s generation or production, like a carpenter’s explanation of how to construct a table, satisfy to some extent the how curiosity we have for an account of unity. But they fall short for a number of reasons. {1} They do not explain the unity brought about but only the processes bringing it about. {2} They lack an explanation for what makes unifying causal processes different from non-unifying ones. And {3} they cannot explain the unity of abstract objects.]
Priest next discusses explanations of unity that are simply accounts of the causal processes that are needed for the unity to come about. He says that such explanation are not satisfactory. For, such explanations do not tell us about what the thing actually is as the unity that it is. It simply tells us how that unity comes into being. He gives the example of marriage. To explain how to get married tells us nothing about what marriage is. Also, not all causal processes produce unities [so to use causal processes as the basis of the account still requires an explanation of what makes these unifying causal processes different from those that do not produce unities.] And lastly, even if we were satisfied with such causal accounts, they would only work for explaining the unities of physical things and not of “abstract objects, such as propositions, pieces of music (types, not tokens), sets” (14).
Alternatively, one might suggest that no explanation in the pertinent sense is called for. What constitutes the unity of a table? Simply that I take a piece of wood and nail four legs to it in appropriate places. There is nothing more to be | said. This will not do, however. What we are being offered here is an explanation of how the unity came into being – the causal processes that brought it about. Now, explaining how something is brought about is not explaining what it is that has been brought about. To explain how to get married is not to explain what a marriage is. One who nails the legs to a table top in the appropriate way has indeed brought the table into existence by certain causal processes. But causal processes are going on all around us, and only some of them bring objects into existence. So what is it that one which does so, actually does? In any case, the suggestion, appealing as it does to causal processes, can account at best for the unity of things subject to such processes. It cannot account for the unity of abstract objects, such as propositions, pieces of music (types, not tokens), sets.
(13-14)
[The Lack of Convenient Accounts of Unity]
[Thus, we do not have any easy ways to account for unity.]
Priest ends by saying, “There are no easy roads here” [for, we have seen all of our viable options, and none works well enough. Priest’s own suggestion is probably not an “easy” road either, as it will involve tweaking some fundamental concepts. But although it is not easy, at least it will work, unlike with our other options.] (14)
Priest, Graham. 2014. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University.
Or if otherwise cited:
Bradley, F. H. (1922), The Principles of Logic, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schaffer, J. (2010b), ‘The Internal Relatedness of All Things’, Mind 119: 341–75.
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