Meinertsen on the Merely Apparent Existence of Thick Particulars

This is the second in a series on Bo Meinertsen's 2018 book. It is part of a 'warm-up' for a review article to appear in Metaphysica.  Here is the first installment.

A thick particular in the parlance of David Armstrong is an ordinary particular taken together with its non-relational properties. But an ordinary particular is distinct from each and from all of its properties: it is that which has these properties. If we consider an ordinary particular in abstraction from its properties, what we have before our minds is the particular qua particular. From here it is but a short step to the much maligned and hotly contested bare or thin particular. Meinertsen ably defends bare or thin particulars as constituents of states of affairs in Chapter 5.

A tomato will serve as an example. Call it 'Tom.' There are any number of contingent truths about Tom. Tom is red; Tom is ripe; Tom is round; etc.  Meinertsen and I agree that these truths need truthmakers. As I would put it, they can't just be true. What in the world makes them true? For Meinertsen, states of affairs (STOAs) play the truthmaker role.  A (first-order) state of affairs is a unified complex consisting of the instantiation of a property by a thin particular, or the instantiation of a relation by two or more thin particulars. Instantiation is an asymmetrical external relation that, in the monadic case, connects a thin particular to a property thereby forming a state of affairs.  The truth that Tom is red is thus made true by the state of affairs, Tom's being red, where the subject constituent is a thin particular, thin-Tom if you will, and not thick-Tom, Tom together with his intrinsic properties. And the same goes for the truth that Tom is ripe, and the truth that Tom is round.  For each truth there is a truthmaking state of affairs, a thin state of affairs we can call it since it includes only one of thick-Tom's properties.  

Now take the conjunction of all of Tom's intrinsic properties. The result is a conjunctive property.  Call it the nature N of Tom. The instantiation of this nature by a thin particular is a state of affairs.  This is because N is a bona fide property, and the instantiation of any property by a thin particular is a state of affairs. This state of affairs is a thick state of affairs, and is identical to the thick particular, Tom. So the following comment (in the earlier thread) by Meinertsen comes as a bit of a surprise:

As to (4), well, in my view, thick particulars aren’t real STOAs, merely apparent ones. It’s true that I assay a thick particular as the instantiation of N, the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of its intrinsic properties. But I also argue that conjunctive properties are truthmaking reducible (TM-reducible) - i.e. only existing at the level of truths, not at the level of truthmakers - and that the instantiation (‘instantiation’) of a TM-reducible property isn’t a real STOA.

This is puzzling because the dialectic started with a really existent thick particular, Tom together with his properties, but seems to end with the elimination of the starting point and the demotion of the thick particular to a mere appearance.

The reasoning seems to proceed as follows. The contingent truth that a is F needs a truthmaker, and so does the contingent truth that a is G. But the conjunction of the two truths -- which is 'automatically' true given the truth of the conjuncts -- does not need its own truthmaker.  So these three truths need only two truthmakers. There is no need for a third truthmaker because the truth of the conjunctive proposition supervenes on the truth of its conjuncts. It's an aletheiological 'free lunch.'

Now consider the conjunction C of all the truths about a, or about Tom in our example. What makes this conjunction true are the 'thin' states of affairs corresponding to and grounding each of the truths  in the conjunction. The 'thin' states of affairs do all the truthmaking work: there is no need for a separate 'thick' state of affairs to serve as truthmaker for the conjunction itself.  But if there is no need for 'thick' states of affairs, then there is no need to posit thick particulars in reality. (A thick particular just is a 'thick' state of affairs.)  So thick particulars are best regarded as merely apparent.

That is the argument as far as I can tell. Did I get it right, Bo?

Critique

But if there is no thick particular in reality, then what makes it the case that each of the thin particulars in each of the thin states of affairs is the same thin particular? Meinertsen speaks above of "the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of its intrinsic properties." (emphasis added) What is the antecedent of the pronoun 'its'?  That would have to be Tom in our example, thick-Tom, Tom together with all its properties. So the very identity of C -- its being the conjunction it is and not some other conjunction -- presupposes the reality of thick-Tom, Tom together with his intrinsic properties.  For C to exist and to be true, thick-Tom must exist. 

I conclude that one cannot take thick particulars to be merely apparent.  Their reality is presupposed if the STOA style of ontology is to get off the ground in the first place.

Now the tomato example is what Meinertsen rightly calls a "toy example." (5).  We philosophers employ such examples for convenience ignoring the fact, if it is fact, that tomatoes and other meso-particulars are not ontologically fundamental. So it may make sense to say that thick-Tom and his colleagues do not really exist. But surely the micro-entities of physics do exist and are thick particulars and thus 'thick' states of affairs. There have to be some thick particulars somewhere.

On p. 70, Meinertsen tells that at the level of truthmakers, there are no such things as molecules. Presumably he will say the same about their constituent atoms.  But what about sub-atomic particles?  Could he be telling us that, no matter how far down we go, we will never encounter anything fundamentally real?

Comments

[Bo]

Bill, you present elegantly and correctly my argument that there’s no need for ‘thick’ states of affairs. But you’re wrong in attributing to me the view that there's ‘no need to posit thick particulars in reality’. I only claim that thick particulars don’t exist at the level of truthmakers. That, by my assumptions and the proposed assay of thick particulars, is equivalent to the claim that they’re merely apparent SOAs. Whether or not this implies that there are no thick particulars ‘in reality’ (that they are ‘a mere appearance’, as you put it) is interesting - but I have no view on it.

And I’m not saying anything to that effect, at least not on purpose; in particular, I don't say that thick particulars are ‘merely apparent’. They’re merely apparent *states of affairs*. But there’s a world of difference between holding that x is a merely apparent Phi and holding that x itself is merely apparent.

But perhaps there are reasons I ought to endow thick particulars with a higher ontological status, as it were. You present one of them, an argument from individuation, with your characteristic clarity. However, as I argue in Chap. 5, in line with a rather distinguished tradition, the bare particulars do all the individuation of thick particulars we need.

As to your final point of criticism, I'd also apply my argument to the thick particulars that are sub-atomic, yes. But again, I'm only saying that they don't exist at the truthmaker level, not that they're not real.