A technical problem for organicism

Van Inwagen’s account of composition is that

1. the xs compose a whole if and only if their activity constitutes a life.

Here is a possible problem that just occurred to me. Let x₁ be me and let x₂ be one of my particles. Then x₁ and x₂ compose me.

Now when a plurality of things have an activity, that activity is a joint activity. However, just as it is ridiculous to say that I and my right leg have walking as a joint activity, it seems incorrect to say that I and my particle have a joint activity that constitutes a life. Thus, it seems incorrect to say that x₁ and x₂ have an activity that constitutes a life. Of course, x₁ by itself has an activity ϕ that constitutes a life, and x₂ participates in ϕ. But given that ϕ is the activity of x₁ by itself, it seems incorrect to say that ϕ is a joint activity of x₁ and x₂.

One might try to define a more technical concept of engaging in an activity that implies that whenever x₁ engages in an activity ϕ with the help of a part x₂, that always counts as x₁ and x₂ engaging in ϕ. Here is an attempt:

2. The xs engage in an activity ϕ if and only if each of the xs contributes to ϕ and together they accomplish all of ϕ.

But it seems wrong to say that I and my particle x₂ together accomplish a life. That would once again sound like we have a joint activity, which we don’t.

This is better:

3. The xs engage in an activity ϕ if and only if each of the xs contributes to ϕ and anything that is a part of something that contributes to ϕ overlaps one of the xs.

But this falls afoul of van Inwagen’s requirement that an answer to the special composition question make no reference to mereological concepts like parthood or overlap.

But perhaps I am needlessly fastidious about the use of language. Maybe I and my heart, or I and my topmost particle, do engage in life. We do sometimes use this locution about a government body: "x, with y at the helm, ϕed." Maybe if that's true, we can say that "x and y ϕed", despite y being a part of x. But it still sounds wrong.

Eliminativist relational dualism

Here is a combination of views that, as far as I know, is missing from the literature:

• eliminativism about persons

• multigrade relational dualism.

Let me explain the view. There are no people on earth. There are just particles arranged humanwise. No particle by itself has mental properties and there is no whole having mental properties. But there is irreducibly collective activity mental activity. The humanwise-arranged particles responsible for this post stand in non-physical mental relations, such as collectively being aware of the smoothness of the spacebar and collectively intending to communicate a novel philosophy of mind view. These relations are multigrade in the sense that there is no specific number of particles that are needed to stand in such a relation.

There are about 10²⁸ (give or take an order of magnitude, depending on whether we count just the brain or the whole body) particles jointly responsible for this post, but some particles are always flying off and terminating their participation in the relations and others are joining, which is why the mental relation is multigrade.

The availability of the view shows that arguments, like those of van Inwagen and Merricks, for the existence of complex wholes based on our mental function need more work. As does Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”: perhaps all we can say at the outset is is “There is thinking so there is one or more things that individually or jointly engage in thought.”

The view has the very attractive feature that it is compatible with nihilism about parthood: there need be no part-to-whole relation. This allows for a very nice and simple ideology.

The view is a dualist view, and hence puzzles about phenomenal properties, the unity of consciousness and intentionality can be solved much like in property dualism. (E.g., consciousness is unified by joint possession of a consciousness property.)

But the typical property dualist has two things to explain: why a single entity arises from a bunch of particles arranged a certain way and why that entity gains mental properties. The eliminative relational dualist only needs to explain the latter.

At the same time, some of the difficulties with the more normal kinds of eliminativism about persons (think of Unger and the Churchlands) are neatly solved. The idea of thought without any subject of thought is absurd. But we can draw on reflections in social epistemology to get a model for thought with an irreducibly plural subject of thought.

As I think is often the case with metaphysical views, the main difficulties arise in ethics. There is no particular difficulty about being responsible. The particles that engaged in a joint action are jointly responsible. The problem, however, is with holding responsible. Particles are always leaving and entering the mental relations. Many of those particles that were responsible for the robbery last year are now scattered across the city, and while (at least for last year’s robbery) a bunch of them are still clumped together, it’s impossible to punish them without punishing a plurality of particles that includes a number of particles that had nothing to do with the robbery. And this is nothing compared to the difficulty of punishing cannibalism, since we will end up punishing many victimized particles.