Processive and Compositional Substance Ontologies

Another interesting topic, bordering on our discussion above, concerns different views of the nature of entities, and consequently of the features which individuate them. Here, we may usefully introduce two different views. Those with particular interests in living entities and the philosophy of biology are often inclined to think that the significant distinction between ‘mere’ local aggregates of material and individual substances rests in the fact that the la er engage in a distinctive kind of self-organising activity, from which results their characteristic physical structure and pa erns of growth. To the proponents of this approach, one’s efforts to individuate objects must be directed towards understanding the distinctive kinds of activity which ground their existence. In contrast, to the proponent of an alternative ‘compositional’ view, an object’s activity is of li le ontological significance; its material structure and propen- sity to cohere in the face of outside interference (as well as the fact that it spatially excludes all other objects) is already sufficiently impressive to determinately fix its identity. On this view,

the processive ontology suffers from two principal defects. First, it may often be unclear how it could distinguish individual objects from one another; processes are not, one might think, internally well-individuated continuants but rather secondary entities, dependent for their ex- istence upon their participants – individual substances whose existence is ontologically prior to their activities. Second, and relatedly, this view suffers from a type of ontological snobbery, being unable to say very much about entities whose existence is less clearly caught up with any capacities for self-directed activity, such as stones and mountains. Consequently, it fails properly to identify the persistence conditions of ordinary material objects which, due to their foundational ontological role (ignored entirely by the processive view), might survive many changes in the processes in which they are engaged and yet continue to play an active causal role in the world.

The above discussion, I hope, highlights the excesses of each view. Even self-organising life-processes are, I hope to have suggested, insufficiently well individuated to be tied closely to the existence of individual organisms without further reference to the material structures caught up in them. Further, it seems to me that the fact that substances are associated with such structures does play a crucial role in our intuition that they are the source of stable (and unified) causal powers which have a great impact upon happenings in the world. At the same time though, I have argued that it is impossible to, metaphysically speaking, get any insight into how an object’s physical structure might sustain its identity (or even into that structure’s composition) unless we look into the connections between that structure and the object’s typi- cal mode of activity.1_{Further, it seems to me that one might ward off the charge of ontological}

snobbery by accepting that objects might sometimes be individuated by reference to processes in which they no longer engage. Although I shall not develop this suspicion here, it seems to me likely that one might sometimes individuate inanimate objects by reference to the pro- cesses by which objects of their kinds are typically formed, taking their persistence to stem from their subsequent maintenance of the physical structures with which they initially came into being. I hence conclude that processive and compositional perspectives upon material

1_{Indeed, even though I liberally made reference above to the tissues around which an organism is organised}

without fully describing how they might be individuated, I should point out here, in line with the materials devel- oped in the last chapter, that may often be the activities (and causal histories) of an organism’s parts, rather than their physical configuration, which determines whether they compose one or many such systems.

4.1. The Ontological Application of Uninstantiated Characterising Sorts

substances must interact if either is ever to offer us an informative individuative perspective. Under this approach, these perspectives emerge not as competing accounts of individuation but rather as interdependent elements of a single ontological view.

I above suggested that material substances must sometimes be individuated by reference to activities in which they do not engage. This thought accepts that an object’s structural fea- tures cannot, in isolation from its activities, individuate it. Indeed, more crucially, it suggests that we may gain no insight into the metaphysically significant aspects of an entity’s physical structure without reference to some such activities or processes. However, it does not follow from this that we may individuate material substances without reference to their material structure; the processive view cannot give a satisfactory perspective upon an entity’s persis- tence unless it incorporates the compositionalist’s concern with material structure. By firmly distinguishing between the conditions under which a sort is instantiated and those in which it may individuate objects, the ideas presented above give clarity to the suggestion that we should reject the contrast between compositional and processive ontologies and instead make use of the strengths of each.