Abstract

In Material Beings Peter van Inwagen confronts the question, "When are objects parts?" His answer--that things compose something if and only if their activity constitutes a life--has the radical consequence that there are no chairs, mountains, or any visible objects except living organisms. I claim that van Inwagen does not give us the deep truth about the world, but rather an idealized way of speaking about the world. ;Facts about what there is, I argue, are like facts about motion--as conceived by a spatial relativist. A spatial relativist believes that sentences that ascribe motion or rest only have content when considered with respect to a material frame of reference. A strict report of all the kinetic facts, for the relativist, would be one that is based on a single frame of reference. There could be many such reports. Some of the sentences in different reports would appear to express contradictory propositions. ;The same is true of a comprehensive rendering of facts in general, a "super description" of the world. Van Inwagen's ontology shows us one way of describing the world rigorously and systematically. But there are many other ways, appropriate for various ends and purposes. Ultimately, it is possible that there be compatible theory formulations, one of which contained the sentence "There are chairs" and the other of which contained the sentence "There are no chairs." We can understand a sentence only if we are familiar with the method of description that shapes the theory formulation of which it is a part. Knowing the method of description means "knowing how to go on" in the language of the theory--being able to draw inferences and to describe states of affairs in the appropriate idiom