Do Chairs Exist?

0:06 Hey Vsauce!

0:11 Michael here.

0:15 And here.

0:18 Michael here!

0:19 hey vsauce!

0:22 what is here?

0:25 what is there?

0:26 what is there?

0:28 What REALLY exists?

0:30 Do waves exist or are there just things that are wavy?

0:35 When does a piece of food I’ve eaten stop being food and become me?

0:41 Do chairs exist?

0:46 Ontology is the philosophy of existence.

0:49 And chairs are what philosophers call ORDINARY OBJECTS.

0:58 Ordinary objects are the plain old common sense things we deal with every day:

1:04 spoons, buckets, rocks, stuff like that.

1:07 Their existence is as obvious as possible but the more

1:13 we try to sus out where they are, the more sus they become.

1:19 First of all, sure, this could all be a dream.

1:24 Maybe we’ve all been hallucinating chairs all these years.

1:27 Or this could part of the simulated reality pumped

1:31 into our brains while our bodies are harvested for energy.

1:36 But underneath that skepticism there’s a deeper

1:38 ONTOLOGICAL question that we need to answer first.

1:43 Regardless of whether this spoon is made of real atoms or simulated atoms,

1:49 is it really possible to be “made of” something?

1:55 Take a look at these two things.

1:57 As we all know, two minus one is… TWO?!

2:02 There ARE two things here: An origami crane AND a piece of paper.

2:07 I’m kidding, of course, there’s really just one:

2:10 the crane and the piece of paper are the same.

2:15 But watch this.

2:25 Where’d the crane go?

2:32 If the paper and the crane were truly identical,

2:35 they would share everything in common.

2:37 But clearly they don’t: the paper can survive being unfolded, the crane cannot.

2:43 Also, I made the crane, but I didn’t make the paper.

2:47 And the paper was around before the crane.

2:50 For two things that are the same, they sure are different.

2:55 This relationship is called CONSTITUTION: paper constitutes the crane.

3:00 It’s a one-to-one relationship,

3:02 but there’s another kind of “being made of” going on here, too.

3:08 This paper is made not of ONE other thing, but of sextillions of things:

3:14 fundamental subatomic particles: electrons and quarks,

3:17 or strings, or physical and virtual fields.

3:21 This many-to-one relationship is called COMPOSITION.

3:26 Philosophers call whatever it is that matter is ultimately composed of SIMPLES:

3:31 a simple is a thing that, unlike a piece of paper, has no parts.

3:36 No substructure.

3:37 Not even a top or bottom.

3:38 It could be the case that there are no simples,

3:41 that there’s just a never-ending chain of smaller and smaller substructure.

3:45 Philosophers call such a reality a GUNKY universe.

3:50 If structure never ends in the other direction and everything turns

3:52 out to be part of something bigger with no final complete composite,

3:56 that’s what’s known as a JUNKY universe.

4:00 Point is: believing ordinary objects exist and are

4:03 made up of smaller things is quite common.

4:08 It’s called ontological reductionism.

4:09 It’s the position that wholes are NOTHING MORE than their parts.

4:14 But our cranes and our paper challenge that notion.

4:17 it seems like being MADE OF some

4:20 things IS different than just BEING those things.

4:24 Let’’s agree on what it means to exist.

4:28 Let’s say that for something to exist is simply

4:32 for there to be more than zero of it.

4:36 Pegasus exists if we mean “are there any winged horses in works

4:40 of fiction and mythology?” And pegasus does not exist if we mean,

4:45 “are there any physical, flesh-and-blood winged horses that evolved

4:50 on Earth through natural selection.” okay,

4:53 so if we can agree on that, then of course chairs exist!

4:56 There’s this one right here.

4:58 I can see it and feel it and taste it.

5:03 yea.

5:03 It’s dry and..

5:05 a little bit salty.

5:07 Dry and salty are what we call PROPERTIES.

5:12 Properties tell us what things are LIKE.

5:15 For example, this slice of cheese is FLOPPY.

5:19 By noticing and sharing properties,

5:21 we can let each other know what to expect from things.

5:25 And we all more or less agree on what things there are.

5:29 We give names to stuff and if they catch on, we

5:31 put them in dictionaries with the word “noun” next to them.

5:36 But are all of these nouns an inventory

5:39 of the universe… or an inventory of things we MADE?

5:43 Let me put it this way: do islands exist?

5:47 Well, it’s in the dictionary and a quick look around

5:49 confirms that there are more than zero islands, so yes.

5:54 Islands exist.

5:56 But what about incars?

6:00 An incar is a car that is IN a garage.

6:04 As a car leaves a garage,

6:07 an incar diminishes at the threshold until it collapses into nonexistence.

6:11 Later, an extremely similar incar may emerge

6:14 at the same threshold when the car returns.

6:18 Are there any cars in garages right now?

6:21 If so, then incars exist.

6:25 You might be thinking, “that’s not a thing.

6:29 you just made that up.

6:31 And it’s silly: “being in a garage” is just a property that a car can have.

6:37 Stop trying to make incars a thing.” Ok,

6:39 first of all, I didn’t make it up, Eli Hirsch did.

6:43 And second of all, if you think incars aren’t things,

6:47 wait till you hear about islands.

6:50 An incar might just be a relation between a car and a garage

6:53 but an island is just a relation between land and some water.

6:58 Now, “island” might be a more useful concept than “incar,”

7:02 but does that make islands OBJECTIVELY more real than incars?

7:08 And what about trogs?

7:10 A trog is an object whose parts are a tree and whatever dog is nearest.

7:16 Here’s a picture of one.

7:18 Do you see the trog?

7:19 this is its tree part and this is its dog part.

7:23 You might be thinking, come on, how can THAT be a thing?

7:26 The tree and the dog aren’t even connected!

7:29 well so what?

7:30 These two pieces of fabric aren’t connected

7:32 and yet they’re a thing called a bikini.

7:35 Now sure, if we cut down this tree and burn it for warmth,

7:39 we wouldn’t feel the need to apologize to what’s

7:42 left of the trog for destroying its tree part.

7:46 But maybe we should?

7:48 What if some extraterrestrials showed up and said they

7:52 thought dogs and trees composed trogs— would they be wrong?

7:57 Could we convince the otherwise?

8:01 Ontological realists believe that we could.

8:03 That there really is a mind-independent answer to the question,

8:07 “what is there?” People like Theodore Sider believe that the universe

8:11 has “joints” and we can cut up reality up into objective,

8:15 real things by finding them.

8:18 Ontological anti-realists disagree.

8:21 Their position is that what we think there is is just one way to cut up reality.

8:25 It’s a good one for us and our needs,

8:28 but it’s not objectively more true than any other.

8:31 So who’s right?

8:32 Hmm… well if these blocks compose a tower… what do they compose now?

8:43 Just because we don’t have a name for..

8:45 this..

8:46 doesn’t necessary mean that I haven’t accidentally built something.

8:49 Does it?

8:50 When DO two or more things compose something else?

8:56 Peter Van Inwagen calls this the special composition question.

8:59 In MATERIAL BEINGS he considers possible answers:

9:03 maybe things compose something only when they’re in contact.

9:07 That’s a good thought, but it doesn’t explain how a BIKINI can be a thing.

9:11 Or why two books are still just two books

9:14 when one is stacked on top of the other.

9:17 you know, Maybe a certain degree of FIXATION is required.

9:22 Or a ‘melding’… if a surgeon sewed us together and the skin

9:26 healed with no seam and we shared the same blood supply… you know,

9:31 even then it would seem wrong to say that we’d become some new kind of animal.

9:35 There’d still just me and you.

9:39 But like, stuck together.

9:41 The philosophy of parts and wholes is called

9:45 mereology and Mereological Universalism is the belief that there’s

9:48 an answer to the special composition question

9:51 and the answer is this: any assortment of stuff,

9:55 no matter how strange or scattered across time and space composes a thing.

10:01 some pages compose these books but I don't just have two books here.

10:04 Oh no, there's also a third thing let's call

10:07 it a "took" because it's parts are Two Books.

10:10 There is also something composed of my left ear,

10:14 the northern third of every brown trout in England, and the Eiffel tower.

10:19 Just because it has no name and no one’s ever talked

10:22 about it before just shows a lack of intrest on our parts.

10:26 To a universalist, eliminating some composites

10:28 but not others is just too arbitrary.

10:31 We may as well accept them all.

10:35 Eliminativism is any belief that accepts some composites, but eliminates others.

10:41 Peter Van Inwagen, for example, believes that there are no ordinary objects,

10:46 no chairs or shirts or shoes.

10:50 Right here there are just some simples— atoms or whatever— arragned show-wise.

10:55 There isn;t something else here called a shoe.

10:58 But he thinks that because people believe they themselves exist,

11:01 and he can’t see how something could believe it existed without existing

11:05 in the first place to even think that, there must be people.

11:09 He goes further, though, to argue that ALL living thigns exist.

11:14 While admiting he doesn’t have any “knock-down” agruments in their favor,

11:17 he mentions that because simples that are part of a living

11:21 organism maintain the organism—— while shedding some members and gaining others,

11:26 all while remaining individuated from other organisms, unlike,

11:29 say, waves of water at the moment of collision,

11:34 clearly, simples in the act of a life must compose something.

11:39 That position is ORAGANICISM.

11:41 It’s been called the belief that people exist,

11:45 but that none of them wear clothes.

11:48 Mereological Nihilism is less generous.

11:51 It’s the belief that there aren’t any trogs or incars OR dogs or trees.

11:58 Because nothing ever composes.

12:00 The nihilist doesn’t believe that there is NOTHING here.

12:03 There are lots of simples, but that’s it.

12:07 That might sound puzzling: how can a bunch of fundamental particles,

12:11 arranged into atoms and molecules that are arranged like this NOT be a chair?

12:17 That’s JUST IS what a chair is!

12:20 Good question.

12:21 Let’s call that deflationism: the belief that this is all silly and that all

12:27 of these positions are talking past each other:

12:30 they all agree on what reality contains:

12:33 they all believe that there are simples here

12:36 and that those simples are arranged in a chair shape.

12:39 Since that’s just what a chair IS, they all believe in chairs.

12:43 Those who say they don’t just being weird and contrarian.

12:49 Deflationism has many supporters.

12:50 And it truly is the heart of our issue today.

12:54 But to address it, we should first see why it would

12:58 be nice if all of these parts did not form a chair.

13:02 Let’s begin with over-determination: If chairs really do exist,

13:07 shouldn’t they be able to interact with us?

13:10 The thing is, though,

13:11 everything this alleged chair can do can be described by referencing

13:15 the behavior of simples here and any other simples that come along.

13:20 An account of the activities of every ATOM in this room,

13:24 leaves nothing for the chair to explain.

13:28 Composites are causally redundant.

13:32 Believing in chairs is like believing that, while yes,

13:35 the burning gas from my stove completely describes why the water in a pot boils,

13:41 there’s ALSO a magical invisible substance called boil-o that comes

13:45 out of my stove that does the same thing

13:48 as the flame at the same time and if there was

13:51 no boil-o the flame would warm the water just the same, but there is boil-o.

13:57 Chairs are no more real than boil-o.

13:59 Composites over-determine what happens in the world.

14:04 They also lead to over-COUNTING.

14:07 For more on that, let’s say hello to this video’s sponsor.

14:12 Hi.

14:13 I’m Michael Stevens.

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15:16 That’s a good deal, but the ontology seemed wrong.

15:21 If I count some parts, I shouldn’t also count the whole they compose.

15:26 But if you believe in composite objects you MUST do this, right?

15:30 After all, the composite exists.

15:32 So if this chair contains, say, 100 sextillion atoms,

15:37 then there are actually AT LEAST 100 sextillion and one things here:

15:43 all of these atoms and also a chair.

15:47 That seems wrong..

15:49 but wait, there’s more.

15:52 If I take a knife and scrape off a tiny part of this chair… is it still a chair?

15:59 I think most of us would say yes.

16:01 It would still be a chair even if I removed a tiny bit again.

16:05 And again.

16:06 A series of tiny innocuous removals is called a SORITES SEQUENCE.

16:13 The trouble they cause is that while it seems we

16:16 must accept that each individual step doesn’t annihilate the chair,

16:20 clearly, ENOUGH minute removals WILL eventually leave us with no chair.

16:26 Nothing at all, in fact.

16:27 But how can that be?

16:29 How subtracting zero over and over again EVER give a different result?

16:34 Clearly, there must be a point at which a tiny change DOES make a difference.

16:40 Different people might give different answers

16:42 as to where that line is— but, you know, we could just stipulate the boundaries:

16:48 we could define “chair” in some extreamly precise way.

16:53 If we did that, if we defined the shape, function, history,

16:56 and use that makes something a chair so

16:58 precisely that the even the smallest deviation would

17:01 make or break its status as a chair… how could we know if it’d done it right?

17:07 If we called up God and said, “hey dude, watch this, see this chair?

17:13 Okay, now we’re going to remove a single atom from it.

17:17 Ta da!

17:18 It’s no longer a chair is it?” Would God would be like, “pwha!

17:24 Correct!

17:24 you guys nailed it.

17:26 That is exactly right.

17:28 It was a chair before and now, in my infinite wisdom,

17:31 I can confirm that that single atom was

17:34 what made the difference.” Unless there’s some explanation

17:39 for why a boundary should be drawn in a precise way instead of some other way,

17:46 our stipulations are just arbitrary.

17:48 Ordinary objects may be unredeemably vague.

17:53 But being vague may actually be a feature of ordinary objects.

17:58 For example, how many people is a crowd?

18:01 10 people standing together in a huge empty park might be more of a group,

18:06 but 10 people standing further apart in a tiny

18:10 waiting room will feel way more CROWDED.

18:13 The fact that our terms depend on context, that they’re PLASTIC,

18:17 make it seem less and less like they’re

18:20 describing THINGS and more and more like they’re pragmatic.

18:23 That rather than telling what there is, they tell us to expect.

18:29 Peter Unger has pointed out that there’s at least one kind

18:32 of thing that CAN survive a sorities sequence without paradox: stuff.

18:38 If you innocuously remove pieces from something

18:41 that is just “some stuff” you will still have some stuff after each step

18:47 until you reach a clear and unambiguous boundary:

18:51 when the last piece is removed, there will no longer be any stuff.

18:57 This might show that there ARE composite objects: stuff.

19:02 As soon as we pretend that some stuff is a THING, though, vagueness sets in.

19:08 Suddenly we’re talking about a thing that can lose parts

19:11 but also can’t lose parts and unless contradictions can exist,

19:15 words like “chair” don’t really refer to any thing in the universe.

19:21 Sorites seqeunces lead to other problems, too.

19:25 Like: the PROBLEM OF THE MANY.

19:29 If removing a tiny number of atoms from this chair still leaves me with a chair,

19:35 how many chairs are here?

19:37 I mean, there’s this one.

19:39 And then there’s this one,

19:41 which is really similar to the first but doesn't have these atoms on top of it.

19:49 I don’t even have to remove atoms for this to be a problem.

19:51 All I have to do try to define which

19:53 atoms here are part of the chair and which aren’t.

19:56 At the atomic level, there isn’t a definite boundary.

20:00 Near the edge, it will hard to tell whether a particular molecule is

20:04 part of the moisture in the chair or part of the ambient humidity.

20:09 Instead of there being a single chair here,

20:11 it seems like REALLY there are billions

20:14 and billions of candidates for the chair.

20:18 Which one is the chair?

20:21 But now, suppose that instead of removing pieces like in a sorities

20:25 sequences or choosing pieces like in the problem of the many,

20:29 we instead discard pieces and replace them with new, similar pieces.

20:34 This is the set up to the famous SHIP OF THESEUS paradox.

20:40 Suppose I buy a boat and name it THESEUS.

20:43 Over time, parts of the boat wear out and I replace them with brand new parts.

20:48 After, say 10 years, I might realize that not a single part of my boat

20:52 was part of the boat on the day I bought it.

20:55 Do I now own a different boat?

20:57 Have I owned TWO boats?

20:59 But now suppose the someone has been following me all these years and has

21:03 been picking up each old part I throw out and storing them in a warehouse.

21:08 After I replaced all the original parts they take them and join

21:11 them back the way they way there were 10 years ago.

21:15 Which boat is THESEUS?

21:17 Both?

21:18 If we conclude that ordinary objects don’t exist,

21:22 the problems of sorites, the many,

21:26 theseus, over-determination, and over-counting all evaporate.

21:31 If there are only simples and they never compose anything,

21:35 then which one is the ship of theseus is easy to answer: neither!

21:41 Neither are the boat and nothing ever was the boat.

21:44 All that happened was that some simples got moved around.

21:48 The simples the scavenger has are the simples

21:50 I possessed when I bought the boat, but there’s no mystery of persistence:

21:55 removing or exchanging a piece of stuff never left me with the same stuff.

22:00 There’s no mystery as to which of the billions of chair

22:05 candidates here is THE chair and the removal of no

22:09 specific atoms will ever stop it from being a chair

22:11 because it there is no chair here and there never was.

22:15 There are only simples arranged chair-wise.

22:20 The illusion that there ARE composites that can survive

22:23 changes in parts is an artifact of our minds.

22:27 It’s a helpful one that allows us to track certain properties and ignore others,

22:32 but when taken seriously, it obviously isn’t really how the universe works.

22:38 And that’s okay.

22:39 We shouldn’t be embarassed when we talk about boats or chairs.

22:43 Our words for ordinary objects really do refer to actual

22:47 phenomena and therefore are more correct than believing that, say,

22:51 the sun turned into a black hole yesterday.

22:55 Unlike the false statement that chairs exist,

22:57 there is NO evidence saying the sun turned

23:00 into a black hole yesterday could even be INCORRECTLY describing.

23:04 Because of this, Trenton Merricks calls the belief in ordinary objects false

23:10 but, “nearly as good as true.” This is all silly, though, right?

23:16 Of course there are chairs.

23:19 If you believe that there are some simples arranged chair-wise,

23:22 then you admit that there’s a chair!

23:25 Because that’s just what a chair IS.

23:27 It’s not some additional THING over-and-above these simples: it just IS them.

23:33 Each is still an atom or electron or whatever, but TOGETHER they are a chair.

23:39 Not so fast there, chair-lover.

23:42 What do you MEAN “a chair IS simples arranged chair-wise?”

23:47 the phrase “simples arranged chair-wise” just picks out these simples.

23:52 There’s nothing else for that phrase to refer to.

23:55 There aren’t all of these simples and then ALSO

23:58 some OTHER simples that are the simples arranged chair-wise.

24:02 So do you mean that “chair” is a disguised plural?

24:06 That it refers to lots of things like the phrase “these books”?

24:11 Because “these books” only commits us to the existence of this book

24:15 and this book but not an additional

24:17 single object that’s called a “these books.” Likewise,

24:21 if “chair” just means this simple and this simple and this simple,

24:26 then it points to a whole bunch of things and not one of them is a chair.

24:33 Sure, “chairs” exist if by chair we mean a word for all these simples.

24:39 But if by chair we mean an actual object in the universe,

24:44 there just aren’t any, my friend.

24:47 Except… maybe there is no chair over-and-above the simples,

24:51 but instead something happens when an assortment

24:54 of simples are arranged into a chair-shape.

24:57 Each member continues to be a single atom or whatever,

25:01 but COLLECTIVELY they all simultaneously BECOME one thing: a chair.

25:07 Okay, so then either there’s no chair here,

25:10 just simples; or somehow a miraculous contradiction has appeared:

25:14 many things and ALSO one thing

25:17 that, despite both clearly differing in that respect, are still identical!

25:24 It looks like chairs can’t be identical

25:26 to the parts they’re supposedly composed of..

25:30 but chairs also can’t be DIFFERENT from their composite parts because

25:33 there’s nothing else there and, after counting and accounting for their parts,

25:38 there’s nothing left for the existence of a chair to cause or explain.

25:45 To rescue chairs from non-existence,

25:47 we need to find a way to show that a chair is independent of its

25:53 atoms— and therefore distinct from them— but not

25:57 SO distinct that it’s impossibly over-and-above them.

26:00 We need to find a way to make chairs ONTOLOGICALLY INNOCENT.

26:05 To have our cake and not have it, too.

26:08 Amie Thomasson does this in a very clever way.

26:11 She points out that if I ask you, “hey,

26:14 is there anything in the fridge?” and you open it, see that’s it empty, and say,

26:19 “there’s nothing in here” it would be weird if I came over,

26:22 looked inside, found a single eyelash in the corner and said, “ummm EXCUSE me?

26:29 What is this?!

26:30 you said there was no THING in the fridge,

26:33 but there was an eyelash and, gosh dangit, the whole things is actually FULL!

26:38 Of AIR.” That would be weird because when

26:42 I asked if there was anything in the fridge,

26:44 it was implied that I meant anything TO EAT.

26:48 By arguing that the empty fridge is not REALLY empty,

26:51 I was using the word “thing” in what Thomasson calls a “neutral sense.”

26:56 I used it to mean any and all entities that could possibly be described.

27:01 But you took me to be using “thing” in what she calls a “sortal” sense.

27:07 A sortal is a term that tells us what a thing is in way that allows

27:10 us to count how many there are AND know when there is or isn’t one.

27:16 “Water” is not a sortal.

27:18 If I told you there was water in my basement and you asked,

27:21 “how many waters?” I’d have to use a sortal to answer you.

27:25 For example, “gallons of water.” Thomasson argues that the neutral

27:29 use of “thing” is meaningless when used to ask questions.

27:33 For example, if I used thing in a neutral

27:36 sense and asked how many orange things are

27:39 in this video you would have no idea how I wanted you to carve it all up thus,

27:43 there would be no would be no single correct answer.

27:46 You might say, "uh, one orange thing?

27:49 Your shirt?" But then I could say, “what, no there's my left sleeve,

27:54 my right sleeve, the inside of the shirt, the outside of the shirt.

27:58 Come on, there's way more than one." Unless we use a sortal net,

28:02 any search for what things there are will end in confusion.

28:06 Not because there are no things,

28:08 but because it hasn’t been made clear what conditions to apply when searching.

28:13 For Thomasson, this means that what we

28:16 find depends on what APPLICATION CONDITIONS we use.

28:20 If I ask if there’s anything here that the condition “smaller than a molecule”

28:25 applies to, you could note each such thing and give me an inventory.

28:30 “Chair” would not be on the list.

28:33 But if I asked you if there

28:36 were any medium-sized rigid-acording-to human strength things here,

28:39 “chair” would probably go on your list, and no single atom would.

28:44 If an application condition is satisfied in the wrold,

28:49 then the thing is descrbes exists.

28:51 So CHAIRS do exist.

28:55 If the application conditions for one

28:57 thing are also sufficient for something else, then, if we find the first thing,

29:02 we have found the other because it’s existence is entailed

29:05 ANLYTICALLY by the existence of the first thing— that is,

29:10 by meaning and logic alone.

29:12 For example, if I say that I live in a house you can conclude— without looking!

29:16 that I live in a building.

29:17 There’s no paradox here, I don’t live in a house AND a building— two

29:22 distinct things that defy the laws of physics by being co-located.

29:25 Instead, the conditions that apply to a house are also sufficient for building.

29:32 So a single chair is not impossibly identical to some collection of many.

29:38 Nor is it somehow over-and-above its parts.

29:41 Instead, atoms arranged chair-wise merely logically ENTAIL a chair.

29:47 The entailment connects things

29:49 differentiated by distinct application conditions.

29:52 When we ask which one is the ship of theseus,

29:56 a puzzle erupts because we’re being too neutral.

29:59 We need to say what we mean by “ship of theseus”:

30:02 if we mean the original parts, then this is it.

30:05 Do we mean the thing registered to me by the boat authorities?

30:08 well then it’s this one.

30:10 “But which is the REAL one” is an incomplete pseudoquestion.

30:14 When it come to sorites sequences,

30:16 I think we need to just stipulate where the boundary is.

30:21 I don’t think there’s an objective answer provided by the universe

30:24 or God as to exactly what is and isn’t a chair,

30:28 but that doesn’t HAVE to mean that there aren’t any chairs,

30:31 it can just mean that every single

30:34 collection of simples is it’s own unique object

30:37 independent of our minds and that we get to decide which we will call chairs.

30:43 Vagueness comes from our minds and our language

30:47 but there are no vague objects in the universe.

30:50 We don’t have to believe that our reality is simulated,

30:54 but I do think we have to believe that it’s stipulated:

30:58 it is a reality that contains not

31:01 what intelligent machines have decided to give us,

31:04 but what we have decided we have.

31:07 There’s no fact of the matter as to whether calling

31:10 this a star is the TRUE way to carve up this stuff.

31:14 It’s a pretty useful way to do it, and helpful for at least human purposes,

31:19 but “STAR” is a thing WE imposed on the world.

31:24 As Michael Jubien puts it, “there are no things,

31:27 but as a consequence there are as many things

31:30 as we like.” As for the problem of the many, we can simply just admit that there

31:36 really are billions of slightly different chairs here.

31:40 Some include a few boundary atoms that others don’t,

31:43 but since they all act and react pretty much in unison,

31:46 in our daily lives it doesn’t matter which exact

31:50 material collection we mean when we say “this chair.” However,

31:54 let’s go back to our cranes.

31:59 When we talked about holes we said that holes might be ONTOLOGICALLY parasitic.

32:04 That their existence seems to require the existence of something ELSE:

32:08 something that can HOST the hole.

32:12 Perhaps this crane is holey, too.

32:16 Not a physical thing in its own right, but a disturbance IN some paper.

32:21 There is no material crane here,

32:23 there is only some paper that is arranged crane-wise.

32:26 But once we start entertaining that notion,

32:28 we realize that nearly EVERYTHING we see and feel all ordinary

32:32 obejcts and even ourselves are ontological

32:35 parasites Michael Jubien calls our tendency

32:39 to think that what is true of a “chair” is true

32:42 of the material that is chairing OBJECT FIXATION or PROPERTY REPRESSION.

32:49 Object fixation is useful and “nearly as good as true” but when paradxoes loom,

32:54 we should remember that while chairs exist,

32:57 they aren’t made out of matter and can’t be touched or or felt or tasted.

33:04 All I can do is taste some stuff while it chairs.

33:08 If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck,

33:11 and quacks like a duck, then it’s not a duck, but it is arranged duck-wise.

33:18 I think that the only concrete physical things in our universe are simples—

33:24 or, since our universe could be gunky— the material world only contains stuff.

33:31 And yes, this stuff is chair-ing, but the road paved by the idea

33:36 that that makes this stuff A chair leads to paradox.

33:41 To see how we could have made that mistake,

33:44 let’s remember the famous Clintonian dictum that often “it depends

33:47 on what the meaning of “is” is” There’s the “is” of predication,

33:53 which tells us what some thing is like, as in, this cheese IS floppy.

34:00 And then there’s the “is” of identity which tells us

34:03 what is the same as what for example, 2+2 IS 4.

34:09 To believe that chairs are made of matter— to be believe

34:12 that YOU are made of matter— is to confuse these two ISes.

34:18 When a collection of properties are extremely thorough

34:20 in telling us what to expect from some stuff,

34:23 we tend to just go ahead and NOUN them:

34:26 collapse them into a single word and believe it

34:29 doesn’t just describe some stuff, but REFERS to it.

34:34 I think we have an intuitive sense of the thoroughness of properties

34:37 and this can be seen in how we order our adjectives.

34:41 “Big” can mean many things.

34:44 A big diamond and big house are very different in size.

34:49 “Blue” tells me a bit more about what to expect,

34:53 but CHEESEBURGER, oooh that’s specific.

34:56 So specific, in fact, that we call it a noun.

35:00 This increasing thoroughness may be partly responsible

35:03 for the fact that “big blue cheseburger” sounds fine,

35:07 but blue big cheeseburger” sounds kind of weird.

35:12 When we embrace the idea that cheseburgers

35:15 are not physical objects, but instead,

35:18 exist as an abstract set of properties like juicy, warm,

35:22 soft, and so on, the specter of ontolgical paradox dissipates.

35:28 You and I are not physical objects either.

35:32 “Michael-ing” is a bunch of different properties

35:34 and most of them are very vague.

35:37 They include things like, “knowing who Kevin is,

35:40 being more or less a certain height,

35:43 having a roughly continous relationship with the stuff

35:45 that Mcihaeled yesterday and that that’s Michael-ing today” and so.

35:48 Some of what it means to Michael does concern composition, like,

35:52 the fact that I will still exist even if I shave off the stuff I call my beard.

35:58 If I shaved off my beard, there would still be some stuff Michael-ing,

36:02 but it would be different stuff than before.

36:05 We’re able to lose parts and change and grow because we aren’t made of matter,

36:14 we’re hosted by matter.

36:16 There’s no thing that is you and no thing that is ME.

36:18 As Alan Watts would say,

36:20 the universe doesn’t contain people, the universe PEOPLES.

36:24 Chairs and tables and rocks and buckets and people are not made of atoms,

36:30 they are preformed by atoms.

36:33 We are disturbances in stuff and none of it is us.

36:40 This stuff right here is not me.

36:43 It's just me-ing.

36:44 We are not the universe seeing itself, we ARE the seeing.

36:50 I am not a thing that dies and becomes scattered,

36:55 I AM death and I AM the scattering And as always, thanks for watching.

37:18 as always, links to read and learn more

37:20 can be found in the description down below

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