HUMANO DE UNIVERSIDAD DE GUAYAQUIL

The first proposed answer to SPQ says that a whole is prior to its parts exactly when it can survive the replacement of one. If a whole’s parts are fungible, in other words, then there is a sense in which it something over and above them. A whole with fungible parts is not an

extensional mereological sum, for instance, which is defined in terms of its parts. A whole with fungible parts is not like a mathematical set, which has its components necessarily. The

Fungibility Answer to SPQ--henceforth “the Fungibility Answer”--says that a whole is prior to its parts exactly when it can survive the loss or the gain of one:

The Fungibility Answer: A material whole W is metaphysically prior to its parts, the Ps, iffdef: W can survive an addition to, or subtraction from, the Ps.

Since the metaphysical priority of whole to part is, by the above definition, what distinguishes mere heaps from integrated wholes, the Fungibility Answer entails that something is an integrated whole exactly when it can survive a change in parts, and a mere heap otherwise. So according to the Fungibility Answer, something is a mere heap exactly when it cannot survive a change in parts.

If the Fungibility Answer is correct, then it should cohere with intuitive cases. It should predict, for instance, that piles of sand, mere aggregates, and arbitrary undetached portions of matter are all mere heaps; and that organisms and machines are integrated wholes. So let us ask: does the Fungibility Answer cohere with intuitive cases?

No. The problem with the Fungibility Answer is that every material object--even piles of sand, mere aggregates, and mere portions--can survive a change in parts. Intuitively, such things are mere heaps, and they are importantly distinguished from integrated wholes such as organisms and machines. If the Fungibility Answer is correct, however, the distinction between mere heaps and integrated wholes is not intuitive. It does not distinguish piles of sand from organisms, but rather counts them--and every other material object, too--as integrated wholes. If the Fungibility Answer to SPQ is correct, no material objects are mere heaps. Yet some material objects are mere heaps. So the Fungibility Answer to SPQ is not correct.

To see why the Fungibility Answer fails, it is sufficient to note that every material object-- even piles of sand, mere aggregates, and mere portions--can survive a change in parts.

First. consider a pile of sand. A pile of sand can persist through the removal of a single grain. If we have a pile of sand, in other words, and if remove a single grain from it, this does not destroy the pile. The pile could be destroyed if we scattered the grains widely in every direction, perhaps, but just removing a single grain from the top of the pile will not do it. The same pile of sand can exist both before and after the removal of a single grain. Whatever other questions may arise about the persistence conditions of sand-piles do not concern us;7 _{it is sufficient for our} purposes to note that a pile of sand can survive the removal of a single grain.

Just as piles of sand can survive changes in parts, so can mere aggregates. Consider the whole whose parts include the Eiffel Tower and the red star Betelgeuse. Call this object

“Eiffelgeuse.” Because parthood is a transitive relation, Eiffelgeuse not only has the Eiffel Tower and Betelgeuse as parts; it also has the Eiffel Tower’s parts and Betelgeuse’s parts as parts, too.

7 _{It does not concern us here, for instance, that if we allow heaps of sand to survive the removal of a} single grain, we thereby encounter a Sorites paradox. For whatever the correct solution to the Sorites is, it had better not entail mereological essentialism.

So the various beams that compose the Eiffel Tower are each a part of Eiffelgeuse, as are the hemispheres of Betelgeuse. Eiffelgeuse has all the parts of both the Eiffel Tower and of Betelgeuse.

If Eiffelgeuse is indeed a single material object, as opposed to a mathematical set, it can survive a change in parts. To see why, it is sufficient to note that Betelgeuse and the Eiffel Tower can each survive a change in their parts. Since Betelgeuse and the Eiffel Tower are each a part of Eiffelgeuse, it follows that Eiffelgeuse has parts that can survive changes in parts. Yet parthood is transitive. To survive a change in your parts’ parts is to survive a change in your parts. So Eiffelgeuse--a mere aggregate--can survive a change in parts. Like piles of sand, then, mere aggregates can survive changes in parts.

Finally, even mere portions can survive changes in parts. Consider, for instance, the middle two-thirds of a butter knife. Call it “Middly.” Suppose that the butter knife is chipped in the middle, and that Middly consequently loses a part. Now suppose for reductio that Middly

cannot survive a change in parts. If Middly cannot survive a change in parts, it would follow that the chipping of the butter knife destroys Middly. Since Middly is the middle two-thirds of the butter knife, however, it would also follow that the middle two-thirds of the butter knife is destroyed. Yet this is absurd. Chipping a butter knife does not destroy most of it. So it cannot be that Middly is destroyed by the loss of a part; it must be that Middly, an arbitrary undetached portion of a material object, can survive a change in parts instead. So arbitrary undetached portions of material objects can survive changes in parts.

Piles of sand, mere aggregates, and arbitrary undetached portions of matter can all survive changes in parts. The Fungibility Answer says that the capacity to survive a change in

parts is sufficient for being an integrated whole. So the Fungibility Answer entails that piles of sand, mere aggregates, and mere portions are all integrated wholes. Yet this is incorrect. A pile of sand is not really anything over and above its parts--not, at least, in the way that an organism seems to be. Likewise for objects like Eiffelgeuse and Middly. They do not seem to be wholes whose organization distinguishes them from their environment. On the contrary, many of

Eiffelgeuse’s parts are separated by an astronomical distance! Far from being integrated wholes, Eiffelgeuse and Middly are mere heaps.

A good answer to SPQ correctly draws the intuitive distinction between mere heaps and integrated wholes. The Fungibility Answer does not correctly draw this distinction. So we should not accept the Fungibility Answer.