Metaphysical universism

Here’s a metaphysical view I haven’t seen: the fundamental obejcts (priority version) or the only objects (existence version) are universes, but there can be more than one of these. Call this metaphysical universism (as distinguished from Quisling’s philosophy).

If in fact there is only one universe, metaphysical universism extensionally coincides with monism. But even in that case, metaphysical universism is a different theory, because it has different modal implications. And if we live in a multiverse, metaphysical universism is extensionally different from monism, since monism says that the one fundamental (priority) or one and only (existence) entity is the multiverse as a whole, not the universes.

I can think of two main advantages of metaphysical universism over monism.

First, suppose there is only one universe. It is plausible that there could be another in addition to this one. Metaphysical universism embraces this possibility. Monism only says that The One could have been bigger so as to comprise two spatiotemporally disconnected regions.

Second, there is an old intuition that being and unity are connected. In a multiverse, monism violates this intuition, for in a multiverse it is the universes that have unity, not the multiverse. Indeed quantum entanglement arguments for monism in the context of a non-Everettian multiverse seem to me to point more towards metaphysical universism than monism.

On the other hand, monism has a significant advantage over metaphysical universism insofar as monism solves the problem of truthmakers of negative and universal claims by making The One be the truthmaker of all of them.

Of course, both theories are false.

Two priority monisms

According to priority monism, the cosmos is fundamental, and everything is a metaphysically dependent part. Priority monism is distinguished from existence monism according to which there exists only one thing (say, the cosmos).

Interestingly, one can split priority monism into a weaker and stronger version, where I restrict quantification over objects and facts to concrete objects and facts:

1. Weak priority monism: The existence and intrinsic features of the cosmos fully ground the existence of everything else.

2. Strong priority monism: The existence and intrinsic features of the cosmos fully ground all other facts.

Strong priority monism implies weak priority monism. As far as I can tell from Jonathan Schaffer’s discussion of heterogeneity, he subscribes to strong priority monism. But I think it is worth thinking about merely weak priority monism, because it avoids a certain problem that its strong cousin has.

On strong priority monism, given the asymmetry of grounding, no intrinsic feature of the cosmos can be even partly grounded in facts about an entity other than the cosmos. But suppose that Alice and Bob are fundamental particles located at the same position x, but with Bob having more mass than Alice. Then on strong priority monism, Alice’s and Bob’s masses are fully grounded in (the existence and intrinsic features of) the cosmos. But it is difficult to see how the cosmos can ground the facts that Alice is the one with less mass and Bob is the one with more mass without some kind of dependence on Alice and Bob. If Alice and Bob were at different locations, we could ground the difference in the fact that the cosmos is more massive in one location and less massive in the other. (But then we would have another problem: What grounds the fact that Alice is at the one location and Bob at the other, rather than vice versa?)

On merely weak priority monism, however, we can say that Alice and Bob’s existence is fully grounded in the cosmos, but facts about the mass distribution of the cosmos are grounded in the masses of the secondary beings like Alice and Bob. In other words, we have a two-way dependence in different respects. What makes the cosmos green here is that there is grass here, and the grass is green. What makes the grass exist is facts about the cosmos.

Against Monism

According to Monism:

• (M) Necessarily if there are any concrete physical objects, then there is a concrete physical fundamental object (“a cosmos”) that has all concrete physical objects as metaphysically dependent parts.

Here an object is fundamental just in case it is not metaphysically dependent. But Monism is difficult to reconcile with the Intrinsicness of Fundamentality:

• (IF) Necessarily, if x is a fundamental object, then any exact duplicate of x is fundamental.

For simplicity, let’s call concrete physical objects just “objects”, and let’s only talk of the concrete physical aspects of worlds, ignoring any spiritual or abstract aspects.

Now consider a world w₁ that consists of a single simple object (say, a particle) α. Let w₂ be a world consisting of an exact duplicate α′ of α as well as of one or more other simple objects. Then by (M), α′ is not fundamental in w₂, since it is dependent on w₂’s cosmos (which is not just α′, since w₂ has some other simple objects). But α is the cosmos of w₁, and hence is fundamental, and thus by (IF), α′ is a duplicate of a fundamental object, and hence fundamental.

I can think of one way out of this argument for the defender of (M), and this is to deny the weak supplementation axiom of mereology and say that in w₁, there are two objects: α and a cosmos c₁ which has exactly one proper part, namely α. This allows the monist to deny that α is fundamental in w₁. Many people will find the idea that you could have an object with exactly one proper part absurd. I am not one of them in general, but even I find it problematic when the object and the proper part are both purely physical objects.

Still, let’s consider this view. We still have a problem. For in w₁, there is an object, namely c₁, that has α as its only proper part. Now, suppose a world w₃ that contains a duplicate c₁′ of c₁, and hence a duplicate α′ of α that is a part of c₁′, as well as one or more additional simples. Then c₁′ has only one simple as a proper part, and hence is not the cosmos of w₃, and thus is not fundamental by (M), which contradicts (IF).

So, we cannot have a world w₃ as described. Why not? I think the best story is that a cosmos is a unique kind of organic whole that encompasses all of reality, and that exists in every world which has a (concrete physical) object, and nothing but the cosmos can be a duplicate of the cosmos.

But this story violates the following plausible Distinctness of Very Differents principle:

• (DVD) If x and y are organic wholes made of radically different kinds of particles and have radically different shape and causal structure, then x ≠ y.

But now consider a world consisting of a cloud of photon-like particles arranged in a two-dimensional sheet, and a world consisting of a cloud of electron-like particles arranged in a seven-dimensional torus. The cosmoses of the two worlds are made of radically different kinds of particles and have radically different shape and causal structure, so they are not identical.

Fusions and organisms

Suppose you believe the following:

1. For any physical objects, the xs, there is a physical object y with the following properties:
   1. each of the xs is a part of y;
   2. it is an essential property of y that it have the parts it does; and
   3. necessarily, if all the actual proper parts of y exist, then y exists as well.

For instance, on the standard version of mereological universalism, it seems we could just take y to be the fusion of the xs. And on some versions of monism, we could take y to be the cosmos.

But it seems (1) is false if organisms are physical objects and if particles survive ingestion. For suppose that there is exactly one x, Alice, who is a squirrel, and at t₁ we find a y that satisfies (1). And now suppose that at t₂ there comes into existence a nut whose simple parts are not already parts of y, and at t₃ this nut has been eaten and fully digested by Alice. Suppose no parts of y have ceased to exist between t₁ and t₃. Then y exists at t₃ by (c), and has Alice as a part of itself (by (a) and (b)), and the simple particles of the nut are parts of y by transitivity as they are parts of Alice. Hence y has gained parts, contrary to (b), a contradiction.

(Note that the argument can be run modally against a four-dimensionalist version of (1).)

The mereological universalist’s best bet may be to deny that fusions satisfy (c). Normally, we think that the only way for a fusion to perish is for one of its proper parts to perish. But there may be another way for a fusion to perish, namely by certain kinds of changes in the mereological structure of the fusion’s proper parts, and specifically by one of the fusion’s proper parts gaining a part that wasn’t already in the fusion.

Here is another problem for (1), though. Suppose that Alice the squirrel is the only physical object in the universe. Now consider a y satisfying (1)(a)–(b). Then y is distinct from Alice because y has different modal properties from Alice: Alice can survive annihilation of one of her claws while y cannot by (b). But this violates the Weak Supplementation mereological axiom, since all of y’s parts overlap Alice. So we cannot combine fusions as normally conceived of (since the normal conception of them includes classical mereology) with organisms.

A way out of both problems is to say that there are two different senses of parthood at issue: fusion-parthood and organic-parthood, and there is no transitivity across them. This is a serious ideological complication.

Oligonism

Monism holds there is only one (or at least one fundamental) thing in reality: the universe. Pluralism, as normally taken, holds there are many. An underexplored metaphysical view is oligonism: the view that there are (at least fundamentally) only a handful of objects in reality, but more than one.

One way to get oligonism is to take the universe of monism and add God while holding that God is not derivative from the universe. But that’s still a monism about created reality, and my interest here is going to be in oligonism about created reality (the non-theist reader can substitute “concrete reality”).

The most promising version of oligonism is one on which the correct physics of the world consists of a handful of fundamental fields (e.g., gravitational, electromagnetic, etc.) and these fundamental fields are the fundamental objects in reality.

Oligonism suffers from an inconvenient complication as compared to monism. The monist can at least say that we have derivative existence as parts of a fundamental whole. The field oligonist cannot, because there is no one fundamental whole that we are parts of. On field oligonism, what we need to say is that each of us is jointly constituted by the arrangement of a handful of fields: I exist in virtue of the gravitational, electromagnetic and other fields having the right sorts of concentrations here.

Maybe, though, one can have one-many parthood relation: x is a part of y, z, w, ... even though x isn't a part of y, or z, or w, but only of all them jointly. Then we could exist as parts of the gravitational, electromagnetic and other fields, without us existing as parts of any one of them. A one-many parthood relation isn't crazy. Take an Aristotelian or van Inwagen view on which living things are the only complex objects. Now we could imagine two organisms, A and B, that each have a symbiotic relationship with a third object C but not with each other, so that we have two symbiotic wholes: AC and BC. Further suppose that only a part of C is involved in AC and a disjoint part of C is involved in BC. Then we could say that C is a part of AC and BC, but isn't a part of either AC or of BC, nor is there a greater whole ABC that contains all of C.

Of course, I don't think oligonism is true. The main reason I don't think that is that I think we are fundamental.