DEAN W.

ZIMMERMAN

CRITERIA OF IDENTITY AND THE IDENTITY MYSTICS

1. INTRODUCTION

The centerpiece of this paper is the construction of a framework in which to state theses of mereological supervenience assertions about the dependence of wholes upon their parts. The project is given its point by the light it sheds upon two controversies over criteria of synchronic and diachronic unity. Some philosophers (the Identity Mystics, as I shall call them) claim that, at least in the case of human beings, there is no reason to look for informative criteria of identity over time. I shall argue that, given certain highly plausible theses of mereological supervenience, if human beings are wholly material if, that is, they have no immaterial soul then this view is untenable. In the nal section, I consider a problem that arises for those who suppose that criteria of synchronic and diachronic unity are, in a certain sense, intrinsic.

2. THE ROLE OF CRITERIA OF IDENTITY

I begin, however, with a brief description of the philosophical disputes that have given rise to the technical terminology of criteria of synchronic and diachronic unity or identity. It is relatively easy to say what a principle of synchronic unity is supposed to do: it tells us under what conditions a group of things go together to compose a whole in the case of spatially located objects, under what conditions a group of smaller things go to make up a spatially larger whole. Such principles will look something like this: a set of things S constitutes a whole of kind K if and only if . . . , where the ellipsis is to be lled in by some condition on the members of S. Principles of diachronic unity tell us under what conditions a succession of things existing at different moments go together to compose a temporally extended whole. But this way of putting things may already seem to presuppose what it should not: the doctrine of temporal parts, which
Erkenntnis 48: 281301, 1998. 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Figure 1. The ship of Theseus.

says that just as spatially extended objects have different parts at different places, temporally extended objects have different parts at different times. Philosophers friendly to this doctrine will no doubt regard principles of diachronic and synchronic unity as precisely parallel in form; the rest of us will disagree. But are there any successions of things existing at different moments that can be accepted by both the friends and enemies of temporal parts, and so used to state criteria of diachronic unity that are neutral with respect to the doctrine of temporal parts? After a thorough survey of alternative frameworks for giving criteria of diachronic identity, Harold Noonan concludes that such criteria are best taken as stating conditions necessary and sufcient for a series of events to constitute the history of a persisting thing. His idea can be applied to the Ship of Theseus, a ship kept continuously functioning over many years by gradual replacement of all the original boards. In situation (1) (see Figure 1), the discarded boards become otsam, never recovered; in situation (2), they are saved by an antiquarian and then nally reassembled to form the ship occupying the spatiotemporal path c; in (3), the boards are never replaced, so that Theseus ship becomes gradually unseaworthy, ceasing to be a ship long before the antiquarian puts his boards together. Noonan shows that the position of best candidate or closest continuer theorists comes to something like this: Consider all the events that occur within the boundaries of some ship or other in situation (3) including those rather uneventful occurrences Cardinal Mercier dubbed unchanges, such as a certain boards retaining its location relative to the contours of the ship. If we think of events as exemplications of properties or as property instances, then an event happening within some ships boundaries can be construed as the exemplication of an intrinsic property (of which more later) by any aggregate of boards, and the holding of a relation of distance between any parts. All the events (that are instances of these event-types) going on within the boundaries of Theseus ship in situation (3) also occur

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Figure 2. The ssioning simple.

in situation (2). In the former, they constitute the history of a single ship; in the latter, they do not. The best candidate theorist can interpret the names in the diagram as referring to series of events of this sort. Her thesis can then be put in this way: c and c are the same events; in situation (3) they go together with the events a to constitute the history of a single ship; in situation (2) they do not, but constitute instead the history of a ship that came into being for the rst time when the antiquarian put his collection of planks together. The opponent of best candidate theories of identity holds that, given the precise similarity of the series of events a + c and a + c , the one constitutes the history of a single ship only if the other does. As Noonan realizes, controversies will sometimes arise over whether one has the same or different events in counterfactual situations. Consider the two circumstances depicted in Figure 2: situation (4) involves the ssioning of a simple particle; in situation (5), a process goes on that is intrinsically just like a + c in (4). The best candidate theorist would likely judge that c and c are distinct though qualitatively identical. The substrate of the c events is identical with the substrate of the a events; but the substrate of the c events is not identical with the substrate of the a events. On the assumption that no event could have had a different substrate than it actually had,1 the c and c events cannot be the same.2 I assume that every event is the exemplication of a property; so controversies over event identity across possible worlds can be avoided altogether simply by stating criteria of unity in terms of the properties exemplied by objects at different times. Competing criteria of diachronic unity can then be given in terms of potential histories of objects, where the histories in question consist of collections of parts and potential parts taken at different times and paired with the properties and relations they exemplify or might have exemplied at those times. If xing the intrinsic properties of

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and spatial relations among the parts in these collections is all it takes to settle whether such a series constitutes the history of a single persisting thing, then the criteria of diachronic unity are intrinsic; otherwise, not. It is this approach to criteria that will fall out of the theory of mereological supervenience developed in the next section. But what exactly are intrinsic properties? Intrinsic properties are those that do not differ between qualitative duplicates; no matter how different the environments of qualitative duplicates, their intrinsic properties remain the same. As David Lewis points out, this is a pretty tight denitional circle. One can, it may be hoped, do better. Lewis, in discussions of the intrinsic and extrinsic, introduces the notions of loneliness and accompaniment where an item is lonely just in case nothing exists beside itself and any proper parts it might have, and something is accompanied if and only if not lonely.3 Elsewhere, I have proposed this account of the intrinsic:4 First, dene provisionally spatially and temporally intrinsic properties as those that do not imply either spatial or temporal accompaniment, or spatial or temporal loneliness. Then introduce a notion of parthood for properties, and say that a property is completely intrinsic if and only if every part that is also a property is intrinsic by the provisional criterion. Intrinsic properties are those necessarily equivalent to completely intrinsic properties.

3. MEREOLOGICAL SUPERVENIENCE AND CRITERIA OF UNITY

It should now be more or less clear what criteria of synchronic and diachronic unity look like, and what such things are supposed to do. I turn then to the notion of mereological supervenience the thesis that wholes are dependent upon their parts. For I think it is the conviction that mereological supervenience must be true that fuels the search for criteria of identity. Jaegwon Kim has suggested that mereological dependence the dependence of wholes on their parts is a species of supervenience: supervenience with multiple domains.5 I suggest that criteria of synchronic and diachronic unity are themselves supervenience theses. Principles of synchronic unity state that wholes of a certain sort supervene upon parts arranged in a certain way; principles of diachronic unity state that a persisting whole of a certain sort supervenes upon a series of collections of parts arranged in certain ways. I set up a schematic framework for multiple domain supervenience, in which mereological dependence and its implications with respect to criteria of synchronic and diachronic unity will become clear.

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Before diving into the details, Ill introduce a simple analogy to motivate the theory on offer. The analogy comes from ip books: books with pictures in the lower or upper right-hand corner of each page, which produce a moving image when one rifes through the pages from front to back. Each little picture is, often enough, made out of a bunch of dots. The arrangement of dots on a given page determines what object or group of objects is depicted on that page; the series of all the arrangements of dots that appear on the pages determines what the object or objects depicted do over time whether one disappears or disintegrates, whether new ones appear, and so on. Given the same arrangements of dots appearing in the same order, the same objects must appear doing the same things. The thesis of mereological supervenience I shall articulate afrms that something analogous is true of wholes and their parts. The parts are the dots; if a class of wholes are made entirely of a given sort of part, then xing how things are at a time on the level of the parts will determine how things are at that time on the level of wholes. Furthermore, xing how things are over time on the level of parts determines how things are during that time on the level of persisting wholes. The analogy with ip books will prove helpful both where it holds and where it fails. Let (D1) be the subvenient domain the collection of parts and potential parts in terms of which principles of synchronic and diachronic unity will be stated, the things that will have the subvenient properties upon which wholes will supervene. And let (D2) be the domain of wholes that can be made out of the members of (D1). Generally, (D1) and (D2) will be disjoint. The B-properties and relations or subvenient properties and relations constitute the supervenience base. The A-properties should include all properties of wholes which are thought to be determined by the properties and arrangement of their parts. In order for there to be principles of synchronic and diachronic unity, these will have to include sortal properties, like being an organism or being a cat.6 If principles of synchronic and diachronic unity are intrinsic, then the supervenience base (the B-properties) need only include the intrinsic properties of parts (including their causal dispositions, both active and passive) and the spatial relations holding among them. If, on the other hand, such principles are not intrinsic, more will be needed in the supervenience base: what Kim has called generalized relations will have to be added in particular, generalized spatial and spatiotemporal relations. For every spatial relation that holds between myself and something else of a certain kind (for instance, being two feet from, which holds between me and one of my bookshelves), there is a generalized spatial relation I have, which is really the property of standing in that relation to something or other

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of that kind (in this case, being two feet from a bookshelf). The extrinsic determiners of identity that I shall consider countenancing are generalized spatial relations to things having intrinsic properties appropriate to items in the domain of parts, or to events involving the exemplication of such properties. So if the intrinsic property having positive charge is in the supervenience base, then the generalized relation being two feet from something having positive charge would also be in the supervenience base. Well call this way of enriching the supervenience base, admitting extrinsic determiners. First, I dene a notion meant to capture something like the complete state of a collection of objects at a time complete, that is, with respect to subvenient properties and relations. (D1) F is a synchronic complete specication with respect to B =df F is a property of sets which is such that, necessarily, for any sets S and S , S and S both have F iff there is a one-one function f from S (and its subsets) to S (and its subsets) such that, for any x and {y, z} in S, and any B-property P and Brelation R, x has P iff f x has P , and {y, z} is in the extension of R iff f {y, z} is in the extension of R.

In a domain of ip-book dots, which vary only in color and location on the page, the notion of a synchronic complete specication for dots comes to this: a property of a set of dots on a single page that xes their spatial relations and colors. Any two groups of dots with the same synchronic complete specication will include dots of the same colors arranged in the same way. Synchronic complete specications F and F are structurespecic indiscernible just in case, necessarily, a set exemplies the one if and only if it exemplies the other. The pursuit of principles of synchronic unity for complex objects is justied by the conviction that wholes are dependent upon their parts: Fix how things are at the level of parts, and youve xed how things are on the level of wholes. This conviction can be turned into a more precise principle of synchronic supervenience: (SS) For every set S and S of members of (D1), and all worlds w1 and w2, if S in w1 and S in w2 exemplify structure-specic indiscernible synchronic complete specications, then S constitutes an object in w1 if and only if S does in w2; and if either constitutes an object, then there is an object constituted by S in w1 that is indiscernible with respect to A-properties from one constituted by S in w2.7

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There are two ways of reading (SS): the B-properties that go into the complete specications of the sets of parts may be restricted to intrinsic determiners, or expanded to include extrinsic ones as well. One might have doubts about the truth of (SS) on the intrinsic reading: In the domain of dots, there are groups that would constitute a picture of a cat without a tail, but for the presence of nearby dots that make them just part of a picture of a cat with a tail. Similarly, suppose the subvenient domain consists of living cells and the supervenient domain of mammals, like poor Tibbles the cat, who has just lost her tail in a very sudden accident.8 Couldnt there be sets of cells constituting just a part of a cat that are intrinsically just like the set of cells now constituting all of Tibbles? If so, cells arranged just like Tibbless could have failed to constitute a cat. Someone who accepts this reasoning must throw extrinsic determiners into the supervenience base as well. Then the difference between the external situations of the two sets of cells will make a difference in the generalized spatial relations exemplied by the cells. But whether (SS) be construed weakly (by including extrinsic determiners in the supervenience base) or strongly (by excluding them), it implies that there are principles of synchronic unity.9 For any particular kind K of object made of the parts in (D1), there will be a set G of synchronic complete specications such that a set S from (D1) constitutes a whole of kind K if and only if it exemplies one of the members of G. Granted, this set G will consist of innitely many different complete specications of arrangements of parts, at least in the case of complex objects made of more than just a few parts that can be arranged in more than just a few ways. But that doesnt prove that there is no hope of our seeing what the members of G have in common; the difference between those types of arrangements which yield wholes and those that dont may be quite simple. In any case, if synchronic supervenience is true with respect to some domains of parts and wholes, then there are necessary connections between what goes on at the level of parts and what goes on at the level of wholes. Even if it should prove too hard for us to formulate precise necessary and sufcient conditions for the emergence of a whole out of parts, we should still hope to be able to nd some sufcient conditions, and to see that some others are necessary. To deny that principles of synchronic unity exist for some domain of complex things is, by my lights, nearly incoherent. To deny such supervenience is to say that, although the complex things are made entirely out of things of some other kind, nonetheless everything could have been the same at the level of these parts and yet some of the complex things have failed to exist. On this view, making a complex thing out of parts takes more than just putting the parts together in the right way; it even takes

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more (assuming the supervenience base to include extrinsic determiners) than making sure the parts are in the right sort of environment. What more could be asked for is beyond me.10 Principles of diachronic unity follow from the supervenience of persisting wholes upon the histories of the parts that make them up at different times. Formulating a thesis of diachronic supervenience requires the notions of a B-micro-history, and of the B-micro-history exemplied by a particular object. (D2) T is a B-micro-history =df T is an ordered series of ordered pairs B, t such that: (1) B is a synchronic complete specication, (2) t is a real number, and (3) one member of T is earlier than another iff its second member is lower than that of the other.

The numerical member of these pairs will be used to measure, in minutes, the temporal distances between the parts of the micro-history. If the difference between the numbers in two members of a micro-history is three, this signies that, if the micro-history were exemplied, then the one with the lower number would occur three minutes before the one with the higher number where (D3), below, gives the relevant meaning of exemplication. In the realm of ip-book pictures, a micro-history is a series of possible ways for dots to be arranged on a page, with a page number attached to each arrangement. A series of sets of actual dots exemplies such a micro-history only if each group of dots in the series exemplies one of the arrangements, and the pages on which they appear come in the order specied. In the general case, exemplication of a micro-history comes to this: (D3) A series U of sets of members of (D1) exemplies B-microhistory T =df . There is a one-one function f from U onto T such that: (1) for every pair S and S of members U , S exemplies the rst member of f S, and S exemplies the rst member of f S ; and (2) Ss exemplication of the rst member of f S occurs n minutes earlier than S s if and only if the second member of f S subtracted from the second member of f S = n.

Diachronic supervenience is a matter of the exemplication of indiscernible micro-histories having the same macro-results. Now in the case of dots, theres no need to ask questions about whether the dot on page three that is part of the cats tail is the same as some dot on page four. Each dot is conned to its own page. But in the case of real wholes made out of real parts, this is a question that does matter. If God were to annihilate all the atoms in my body at noon, while an evil demon simultaneously

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replaced them with duplicates arranged exactly as mine would have been, many would be inclined to say that I failed to survive the mishap. We want to be able to recognize the difference between the exemplication of my micro-history in this way (with the instantaneous replacement of all the cells by new ones at some point) and an exemplication of the same micro-history in which the annihilation and creation doesnt occur. I shall say that exemplications of micro-histories are structure-specic indiscernible only if parts that play a certain role in one exemplication of a micro-history have counterparts playing the same role in the other exemplication of the micro-history. (D4) U s exemplication of B-micro-history T is structure-specic indiscernible from U s exemplication of B-micro-history T =df (1) U exemplies T and U exemplies T ; and (2) there is a one-one function f from members of U onto members of U which is such that, for every pair of members S 1 and S 2 of U , S 1 and S 2 exemplify synchronic complete specications P 1 and P 2 in T if and only if: (a) f S 1 and f S 2 exemplify a Q1 and Q2 in T that are structure-specic indiscernible from P 1 and P 2 ; (b) if t 1 and t 2 are the numbers paired with P 1 and P 2 in T , and t 3 and t 4 are the numbers paired with Q1 and Q2 in T , then t 1 > t 2 if and only if t 3 > t 4 , and t 1 t 2 = t 3 t 4 ; and (c) if an individual x or pair y and z in S 1 and S 2 exemplify properties or relations in the supervenience base when S 1 exemplies P 1 and when S 2 exemplies P 2 , then there must be an individual t, or pair u and v, in both f S 1 and f S 2 exemplifying the same properties or relations when Q1 and Q2 are exemplied.

Clause (2a) insures that each exemplication of a synchronic complete specication by a member of U gets matched up with a corresponding exemplication of an indiscernible synchronic complete specication by a member of U . Clause (2b) insures that these exemplications of synchronic complete specications come in the same temporal order, separated by the same temporal distances. Clause (2c) insures that parts in the subvenient domain that persist from one part of the micro-history to another are paired with corresponding persisting parts in the other microhistory. Now it is obvious that when two series of dots are arranged in the same ways on pages that are bound together in the same order, ipping one of the resulting books will reveal a cat chasing a mouse if and only if ipping the other book would do the same. Something analogous is true for any domain of wholes made out of parts. When there are indiscernible

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exemplications of micro-histories, the one can be the history of a single supervening object if and only if the other is; and the supervening objects must be indiscernible with respect to kind and other A-properties. So some micro-histories will be paired with supervening objects. The relevant pairing relation and notion of indiscernibility of A-histories are these: (D5) U s exemplication of B-micro-history T constitutes the history of a single object x =df U exemplies T ; and, for all times t during U s exemplication of T , x exists at t iff x is constituted at t by some member of U which then exemplies some element of T . x and y have the same A-history during t and t =df there is a series of A-properties S such that: (a) x exemplies every member of S during t, and y exemplies every member of S during t ; (2) a property is in S if it is an A-property exemplied by x during t or by y during t ; (3) for every pair P and Q in S, x exemplies P n minutes before Q during t iff y exemplies P n minutes before Q during t .

(D6)

The diachronic supervenience of wholes on parts can now be stated: (DS) For all series U and U consisting of sets of the members of (D1), and all worlds w1 and w2, if U s exemplication of Bmicro-history T is structure-specic indiscernible from U s exemplication of B-micro-history T , then (1) U s exemplication of T un w1 constitutes the history of a single object iff U s exemplication of T does in w2; and (2) if either exemplication constitutes the history of a single object, then, for every object x constituted by U s exemplication of T ,11 x has the same A-history during the time of this exemplication as some object y constituted by U s exemplication of T during the time of the latter exemplication.

The existence of diachronic criteria of unity follows from (DS). For any kind of supervenient whole K that can be made out of the parts in the subvenient domain, there is a set L of B-micro-histories which includes all and only the B-micro-histories that are the histories of a K. By (DS), none of these could have been exemplied without being the history of a K. So it is a necessary and sufcient condition for a given B-micro-history to be the history of a K that it belong to the set L. This, I shall argue, constitutes an informative criterion of diachronic unity for Ks. In what sense, and under what conditions will the set L of microhistories serve as an informative criterion of diachronic unity for Ks? For

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one thing, there should be no Ks in the subvenient domain. But even in some cases where there are no Ks in the realm of parts, the resulting criterion may be less informative than one would like. Suppose, for instance, that there were innitely divisible Aristotelian matter, every chunk composed of smaller bits of the same stuff. And suppose the domain of supervening wholes contains all and only the hunks of this stuff that weigh more than one kilogram, and the subvenient domain all and only the hunks that weigh one kilogram or less. Now I suppose there will be something informative about the criterion implied by the version of (DS) resulting in this case. For instance, a kind of mereological essentialism would probably be true of this stuff: a more-than-one-kilogram mass of it cannot survive the gain or loss of any smaller-than-one-kilogram parts; and as long as you have all the same smaller-than-one-kilogram parts, you have the same larger-than-one-kilogram whole. But the supervenient and subvenient domains in this case are such obviously trivial restrictions on a single broader, naturally occurring kind, that the information gleaned from the criterion does not seem worth much. More is learned if the subvenient kind is very different from the supervenient kind, with associated persistence conditions different from those of the supervening wholes. If criteria for ships can be given in terms of the histories of planks, criteria for cells in terms of the histories of organic molecules, criteria for organisms in terms of the histories of cells, and so on, then there will be, it seems to me, importantly informative criteria of diachronic unity. In general, the more dissimilar the subvenient and supervenient domains, the more informative the criteria that follow from the thesis of mereological supervenience. If properties like being a part of this ship and relations like being part of the same persisting ship as were allowed into the supervenience base of a thesis of mereological supervenience for ships, there would be no assurance whatsoever that informative criteria of diachronic unity would follow. But since the supervenience base is restricted to just intrinsic properties of parts and their relations to other such parts, there should be no danger of uninformativeness resulting from the impurity of the ideology employed in the statement of mereological supervenience. Here is the most serious objection to the whole enterprise of deriving criteria of diachronic unity from mereological supervenience: What has been proven to follow from (DS) is just the existence of a set of microhistories that coincides with all the possible careers of supervening objects. But, for any even mildly complex domain of wholes, there will be innitely many such micro-histories. The condition, having a micro-history that is a member of L might be, for all we know, impossibly complicated

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for human beings to grasp in its details. So we have no assurance that a criterion that follows from mereological supervenience could in any sense inform us of anything. The contention here is that the members of L might be such a heterogeneous bunch, with so little in common, that there is nothing more we can say about them than that they happen to be just the set of micro-histories upon which the wholes in question supervene. I maintain that, at least in the case of the sorts of familiar, complex material objects that most interest us, a defeatist attitude towards our ability to grasp what these histories have in common is highly suspect. Consider, for example, what this would mean in the case of the supervenience of cats upon the histories of smallish bits of cat-hair, cat-esh, and cat-bone. What if these histories had too little in common for us to make useful generalizations about them? Then wouldnt they also have too little in common for us to be able to have reasonable convictions concerning when we have or do not have the same cat? I take it that our evidence for sameness of cat comes from observing cats observing how cat-hair changes color only gradually, how cats grow only gradually, how changes in look or behavior tend to be retained, etc. And indiscernible histories of feline esh and hair will be indiscernible with respect to the observations of these sorts that they make possible; so there couldnt be indiscernible micro-histories the one of which provided more evidence for the persistence of a cat than the other. Furthermore, our sensitivity to the observations that justify belief in cat persistence is not a wholly subrational process we dont have bare intuitions about cat identities that bypass the evidence of our senses, that are not grounded in the awareness of similarities and differences with respect to hair-coloring, behavior, size, shape, and arrangements of feline bodily parts. These similarities and differences are not only completely determined by the microhistories of feline esh and hair; knowing about them is simply a matter of knowing about the micro-history, knowing that there are bits of cat esh and hair arranged thus and so, and that these bits at one time are suitably related to similar collections of bits at later times. Could there be a merely contingent connection, perhaps in the form of a brute but non-necessary law of nature, connecting micro-histories of cat parts with facts about persisting cats? I doubt it. For one thing, there would be no way to tell the difference between a world in which the law holds and one in which it does not. The micro-histories determine all the observable facts, so no observable differences between such worlds could appear. And just try imagining what would be involved in the failure of cat-persistence to supervene upon micro-histories of feline esh, blood, and bone. Tibbles survives the routine loss of a single hair, say, in our world; none the worse

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for wear, she wanders on, and grows a new one. But, in some other world a world in which there are no changes in the laws governing the behavior of feline cells, for weve included causal powers of parts in the supervenience base, she loses the hair, and poof, shes gone. Of course, nothing else happens differently; a cat (a different one) wanders on, growing its new hair, digesting the same mouse that Tibbles ate moments before, etc. Unless removal of the hair had resulted in something substantially different in the nonactual world such as the loss of something like a kitty-soul this is too wild to countenance as a possibility. If a cat, or any other thing, is just a whole made out of suitably arranged cells, then the micro-histories of these cells determine the histories of wholes with a force stronger than mere nomic necessity.
4. OBJECTIONS FROM THE IDENTITY MYSTICS

There are important new voices being raised against criteria of diachronic unity for human beings.12 One wonders how they would respond to all this. The old guard objectors to criteria, such as Chisholm and Swinburne,13 reason as follows: there are no informative criteria of identity for persons; there would be if persons were large material objects the size of living human bodies; therefore a person is not a living human body. But the new opponents of criteria for persons, including Trenton Merricks and E. J. Lowe, do not accept this reasoning. They ask: Why could there not be large-scale physical objects six-foot-tall, 150 pound objects, for instance that lack informative criteria of identity? Their answer: No reason at all. How might Lowe and Merricks try to resist my argument? I say complex objects made out of parts supervene upon them, are dependent upon them. And this requires criteria of unity that can be given in terms of those parts. Lowe might respond by simply denying that persons need supervene on, say, molecules or cells, since on his view14 persons have neither molecules nor cells nor anything else as parts. A person like myself is a material object, in that I have material properties like being six feet tall and weighing 150 pounds. But I am unlike the human organism here, and the mass of stuff that makes it up, in that I have no parts. Theres a familiar objection to views according to which one material object can constitute a distinct one: Since each is just like the other with respect to locally manifest properties, each is 150 pounds if either is. But then lifting both should be like lifting 300 pounds. But it isnt.15 This objection is not as devastating as I once thought.16 Heres the problem with it. Take anything with parts that add up to 150 pounds; when you lift it, you lift something that weighs 150 pounds (the object itself) and

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something that weighs 100 pounds (its bottom two-thirds) and something that weighs 50 pounds (its top one-third); so why doesnt that take 300pounds-worth of effort? Answer: because the extra things lifted were just parts of the whole. So in guring how much work it will take to lift a given collection of objects, one must never add the weight of one to the weight of another if the one is part of the other. There are a number of principles that will insure this doesnt happen. For instance, if all the parts in a set are constituted, ultimately, of atomic parts, one can simply say: Add the weights of all the smallest parts of anything in the set. Or, if theres one member that has every other member as a part, say: Weigh only the biggest member. Now, in the normal case of coincident objects say, a 150-pound hunk of clay and the 150-pound statue made from it following such principles gives the right results. Since every part of the clay is a part of the statue (or at least is constituted entirely of parts of the statue), you shouldnt add the weight of any hunk of clay to the reading of 150 pounds that results from weighing the statue alone. Notice, however, what happens when we accuse Lowe of countenancing distinct objects with weights that dont add up. Applying the dont count common parts principle for guring weights doesnt help. Since the 150-pound person doesnt have any proper parts, a fortiori it has no part (proper or improper) of the coincident hunk of matter or human organism as a proper part. Could it have the organism as a whole as an improper part? Then the organism would be its sole part. But the organism is not simple; so this seems ruled out, by the transitivity of part. Could the simple person be a part (proper or improper) of the organism? Not an improper part, for the reasons just mentioned. And suppose you insist that it is a proper part of the organism. Well, the organism then consists of all the cells, molecules, and so on, plus this extra part, the person. Ignore that extra part for a moment, and whats left of the organism still weighs 150 pounds. So the remainder reached by subtracting the person from the whole (a remainder which sure looks like a living human organism so far as I can see, there is no independent motivation for saying that the organism has a simple person as a part), plus the person (which has no part in common with it), should still weigh 300 pounds. It follows from Lowes view, then, that there really are two wholly distinct objects here, a person and a living human organism, each weighing 150 pounds but sharing no parts in common. The fact that both can be lifted so easily constitutes an empirical refutation of his theory. If, then, persons are to be material objects coincident with these gross physical bodies, they had better have some physical parts. And this takes us to Trenton Merrickss view: although human persons are wholes made entirely of living cells, nonetheless there are no informative criteria of

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diachronic unity for persons. This implies that (DS) is false for the domains of persons and living cells that is, human beings do not supervene mereologically upon their cells. But recall what this would mean: there are indiscernible micro-histories telling precisely the same stories about cells, one of which is the history of a single human being, the other not. Now if extrinsic determiners were excluded from the supervenience base, one could imagine cases that might t this bill. Remember Tibbles and her tail: there might be indiscernible micro-histories involving feline cells, the one of which is the history of a cat that loses her tail, the other of which is not a history of a whole cat at all rather, it is partly the history of a whole cat, but also partly the history of a proper part of a cat (all of Tibbles but her tail). Supposing we buy this possibility, we should allow generalized spatial relations in the supervenience base. But once extrinsic determiners are let in, denying diachronic supervenience of persons on their cells becomes truly heroic. It amounts to the claim that everything could have been the same with respect to all the histories of human cells everywhere (recall that there is now no limit to the range of spatial relations to other cells that can be generalized and included in the supervenience base), and yet there be some persons missing from the world, or some extra ones appearing. How could human beings be made completely out of cells, yet oat free in this way from their parts? If certain kinds of wholes are made entirely out of certain kinds of parts, then worlds that are globally indiscernible with respect to what goes on at the level of these parts had better be globally indiscernible with respect to what goes on at the level of wholes. To claim that its possible for there to have been differences in when and where persons are constituted by cells even if everything had been the same at the level of cells is to promulgate a kind of identity mysticism. Persons are material objects, but they can come loose from their parts, can pass from one set of parts to another like shadows.

5. INTRINSIC CRITERIA OF UNITY ?

Accepting the moral drawn from the case of Tibbles, above, leads one very naturally to conclude that no interesting kind of whole supervenes synchronically upon just the intrinsic properties of and spatial relations among objects in the domain of parts. Sortal properties for complex objects appear to be extrinsically sensitive in the following sense:

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Being a C is extrinsically sensitive =df being a C is possibly such that there is an object x which: (1) is a C, and (2) has a proper part y that is not a C but is constituted by some set S of members of (D1) that is possibly such that: (a) it will constitute x, (b) x will be a C, and (c) S will exemplify a set-theoretic complete specication (extrinsic determiners excluded) that is indiscernible from the one it exemplies while constituting the proper part y.

An extrinsically sensitive C is one that a thing can lack just in virtue of being a proper part of a C; and a set could constitute a part of some x that is a C at t, and then come to constitute x itself at t , and be intrinsically just the same at t and t . If causation does not propagate instantaneously, then any criterion of synchronic unity that appeals in an essential way to causal relations is in danger of being extrinsically sensitive. Let x be Tibbles with a tail, and S be the set of all Tibbless cells except for those in her tail. Consider the synchronic complete specication S exemplies now (absent extrinsic determiners). Given that causal inuence takes a nite time to be felt, couldnt the cells in the tail have been annihilated or have jumped away by some freak of quantum mechanics, leaving S, for the moment, intrinsically just as it is? If so, then, unless we want to say that S constitutes a cat even now (with the tail still attached), we must admit that being a cat does not supervene upon intrinsic determiners alone the criterion of synchronic unity for cats must include extrinsic determiners as well. A natural response to this argument is to balk at the alleged possibility described: it is impossible for there to be a set of cells intrinsically just like S is now, but without a tail (or at least a part of a tail) attached. But arent all of the particles that make up the tail-cells at some distance from the particles that make up the cells in S? If so, it would seem that there must be a time-lag, however small, during which the particles in the tail-cells could be gone but before which their absence would not be registered by any intrinsic changes in S. Are there ways in which this conclusion could be avoided? One could insist that the instant the cells in question cease to be parts of the cat, something changes somewhere in the cells that remain. This will require either instantaneous causation at a distance, or that some parts of the tail cells are coincident with some parts of some members of S. I take it that the latter is preferable. But can there really be parts of one cell coincident with parts of another? If they share some parts in common, this is possible as two homes may share a common wall. The members of the supervenience base can, however, be chosen in such a way that none shares parts with

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any other. This may require arbitrary stipulation about where one cell ends and another begins, but that shouldnt effect the truth of the supervenience thesis. I am inclined to accept all this, but to insist that criteria of synchronic unity are intrinsic nonetheless. But then what sorts of complex wholes could there be what kinds of complex things are not extrinsically sensitive? In order that a kind C not be extrinsically sensitive, no C can contain smaller parts that could come to constitute it without changing intrinsically. So if x is a C, then any set of parts of x that either does constitute or could constitute a C must be such that the C they do or would constitute would be distinct from x. In other words, something very much like mereological essentialism must be true for things of kind C. This does not bother me, since I think there are independent reasons to be a mereological essentialist. Let me briey recount them: Whenever there is a question concerning whether a certain collection of objects composes a whole, there is also a question concerning whether a certain mass of matter composes a whole the mass of matter composed of all the bits of stuff that constitute the members of the collection. This mass of matter is itself physical, and (according to me) itself a whole not a collection or plurality. By my lights, then, whenever one asks, Do the members of S compose a whole?, the answer is always Yes because theres bound to be a mass of matter that is identical with the sum of the members of S. Whats more, masses of matter arent like cats and ships; theyre not sensitive to extrinsic factors; they dont cease to be when scattered, or when other things are attached to them or detached from them. So whether or not the members of S compose something does not depend on relations to things outside the group; in fact, it doesnt even depend upon relations (other than mere coexistence) to things inside the group. Now if the members of S compose a whole distinct from the mass of matter, then there would be two physical objects, of different kinds but otherwise exactly alike, in the same place at the same time. But thats impossible. So the only object thats really there, or even could be there, is just the mass of matter. Collections of objects only compose masses of matter; so, naturally, all principles of synchronic unity are intrinsic. There are at least two spots where this train slows down enough for almost everyone but me to jump off. The rst is at the point where I say that, for every collection of objects, there is a mass of matter that is the sum of those objects. I have defended this thesis at great length elsewhere, and with such relentlessness of detail as to put off almost everyone who has tried to work out my argument (always a good defensive strategy).17 But heres the bare bones of my reasoning:

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A mass of matter is simply the kind of thing that we refer to by mass terms preceded by the or an unstressed some as in, He gave me some water, which I mixed with the water from Heraclitus tub. A leading feature of masses is their mereological rigidity: we are unwilling to allow that I still have precisely the same water he gave me if Ive spilled even a few drops; although I may still have most of the water he gave me. Now some philosophers want to say were picking out pluralities, not wholes, when we talk in this way of some water or the copper in the statue; but I say this couldnt be so, at least not in general. Heres why: Aristotelian theories of matter are, if false, only contingently false; there could have been, perhaps even are, what Aristotle called homeomerous substances homogeneous stuffs that dont break down into simple atoms, but are instead of the same kind through and through. An artifact or organism made out of some such stuff-kind K would be constituted by a mass of matter that could not be identied with a plurality of smallest K-parts. Nor would it be safe to pick a set of parts of some arbitrary size and use those as ersatz-atoms. After all, these ersatz-atoms, to do duty for the mass of K, cannot survive the gain or loss of any parts. But, since the grid used to select the ersatz-atoms was chosen arbitrarily, it turns out that any portion of K you pick is in fact a whole that cannot gain or lose parts. Solving metaphysical problems of constitution requires that one take into account the possibility of Aristotelian stuff-kinds. It would be absurdly parochial to rest content with the reection that the heaps of matter of which we are constituted do not appear to be homeomerous, and so can be treated as sets of atoms. Couldnt things have turned out differently for us? Or, if not precisely for us (perhaps we are necessarily constituted by electrons and quarks, themselves necessarily indivisible), at least for beings just like us in every way that matters? And so I plump for a theory of masses that treats all the most fundamental material stuff-kinds as physical wholes, not collections of atoms. The second point at which many philosophers would jump off is at the rejection of coincident entities. I say there cant be, in the same place at the same time, both a human being that can gain or lose parts and a mass of matter that cannot. The friends of temporal parts say both can be there because, really, theres just one thing lling that place a single temporal part shared between four-dimensional objects that diverge before and after the time in question. The human being and the stuff she is now made of overlap for a tiny stretch of space-time, like intersecting roads with a single square of pavement in common. Others who, like me, reject temporal parts are nonetheless friends of coincident objects; there can be two physical wholes here with differing persistence conditions, but weighing the same

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amount and sharing, at some level, all the same parts. This sort of brute difference between intrinsically indiscernible physical things is, I fear, beyond my comprehension. So I see no choice but to stay on the train until the last stop: The only true principles of synchronic unity are ones that yield masses of matter. Garden variety objects that ostensibly gain and lose parts over time must be logical constructions out of masses, or processes passing through various parcels of stuff in something like the way a hurricane is a process that passes through many different tracts of air and water. There are many who would reject this argument for mereological essentialism but insist that criteria of synchronic unity are intrinsic.18 What motivates their commitment? One factor is probably this: Once extrinsic determiners are allowed to play a role in criteria of synchronic unity, there would seem to be no way to exclude them from criteria of diachronic unity, and thus no principled way to resist best candidate theories of identity. I suspect that anyone who rejects both the doctrine of temporal parts and best candidate theories of identity will be forced inexorably towards mereological essentialism. But I do not pretend to have shown this here.

NOTES
I have beneted from the criticisms and questions of my commentator and members

of the audience in Innsbruck, and also from very detailed comments on an early draft from Trenton Merricks and Loretta Torrago. The paper was also read at Purdue University, where Franklin Mason, Martin Curd, and others provided some very helpful criticisms and suggestions. 1 I defend this assumption in Zimmerman (1997b). 2 Compare Noonan (1989, 161162). 3 Lewis (1983). 4 See Appendix 1 of Zimmerman (1997a) and Langton et al. (1997). 5 Cf. Kim (1993b). The scheme developed in this section is foreshadowed in Zimmerman (1997a). 6 Would any animal physically indiscernible from an ordinary cat still be a cat, even if it were not generated from ordinary cat DNA? Some say no its not a cat unless its a descendent of ordinary earthly cats. But it could mate with ordinary cats, and produce cat-like offspring. Surely the animal would have the same persistence conditions as ordinary cats. So, I would argue, there must be some persistence-condition-determining sortal property that such a creature would share with ordinary cats. 7 I do not say if either constitutes an object, then the object constituted by S in w1 is indiscernible with respect to A-properties from the one constituted by S in w2, since I do not want to alienate the friends of coincident objects at least not at this point. A similar complication appears in (DS). I am indebted to Franklin Mason for pointing out that earlier versions of (SS) and (DS) presupposed that there are no coincident objects differing in sortal and other properties.

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8 Poor Tibbles wandered into a philosophical laboratory by accident back in the sixties.

Peter Geach was chief investigator. For an account of the incident, cf. Wiggins (1968).
9 My strategy here should be compared with Kims (1993c) for proving, in the case of

single-domain supervenience, that supervening properties are equivalent to disjunctions of maximal B-properties (the strongest consistent properties constructible from properties in the supervenience base). 10 Artifacts might be thought to represent a counterexample to this claim; couldnt there be a block of marble just like the David, related in the same ways to other bits of marble as the David, but not a statue? I take this failure of supervenience as just another reason to think that artifacts and artworks are ctions, logical constructions out of objects and times. Consider the ease with which a piece of driftwood or a urinal may be turned into a piece of art. How could such a change really represent a difference in the number of objects there are? And arent all artworks and artifacts on a continuum with such frivolous cases of creation? 11 I leave open the possibility that more than one object be constituted by U s exemplication of T ; there is no need, at this point, to presuppose the falsity of a metaphysics of coincident objects. 12 Cf. Merricks (1998), Lowe (1996, ch. 2), Lowe (1989, 121137), Oderberg (1993), and Mackenzie (1983) 161174). There is considerable skepticism about the availability of informative criteria of identity in Mavrodes (1977) and Quinn (1978). 13 Swinburne concludes that the only live possibility, then, is that persons are (or at least have) an immaterial part; while Chisholm, in some moods at least, wants to leave open the more bizarre possibility that persons are tiny physical particles. See Swinburne (1997) and Chisholm (1989). 14 See Lowe (1996, ch. 2). 15 Cf. Zimmerman (1995a, 8593) and (1995b). 16 Thanks to Peter van Inwagen and Peter Simons for making me see this. 17 Cf. Zimmerman (1995a). 18 Compare, e.g., van Inwagen (1990, 1213).

REFERENCES

Chisholm, R. M.: 1989, On Metaphysics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 2541 and 11928. Kim, J.: 1993a, Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kim, J.: 1993b, Supervenience for Multiple Domains, reprinted in Kim (1993a), pp. 109 30. Kim, J.: 1993c, Concepts of Supervenience, reprinted in Kim (1993a), pp. 5378. Langton, R. and Lewis, D.: 1998, Dening Intrinsic , Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58, 33345. Lowe, E. J.: 1996, Subjects of Experience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lowe, E. J.: 1989, Kinds of Being, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Mackenzie, P. T.: 1983, Personal Identity and the Imagination, Philosophy 58, 16174. Mavrodes, G. I.: 1977, The Life Everlasting and the Bodily Criterion of Identity, Nos 11, 2739. Merricks, T.: 1998, There are no Criteria of Identity Over Time, Nos 32, 10624.

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Noonan, H.: 1989, Personal Identity, Routledge, London. Oderberg, D. S.: 1993, The Metaphysics of Identity Over Time, St. Martins Press, New York. Quinn, P. L.: 1978, Personal Identity, Bodily Continuity and Resurrection, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9, 10113. Swinburne, R.: 1997, The Evolution of the Soul, revised ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 14560. Van Inwagen, P.: 1990, Material Beings, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. Wiggins, D.: 1968, On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time, Philosophical Review 77, 905. Zimmerman, D. W.: 1995a, Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution, The Philosophical Review 104, 53110. Zimmerman, D. W.: 1995b, Ist ein Krper-Austausch mglich? Kommentar zu Peter van Inwagen, in J. Brandl, A. Hieke, and P. Simons (eds.) Metaphysik Neue Zugnge zu alten Fragen, Academia Verlag, St. Augustin, pp. 26568. Zimmerman, D. W.: 1997a, Immanent Causation, Nos supplementary volume (Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 11: Mind, Causation, and World), pp. 43371. Zimmerman, D. W.: 1997b, Chisholm and the Essences of Events, in L. E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, pp. 73100. Department of Philosophy University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA E-mail: Dean.W.Zimmerman.4@nd.edu