1 Denkel, Arda, “Matter and Objecthood,” Dialogue, 28, 1 (1989): 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The most eloquent recent exponent of this position, and the particular target of Denkel's discussion, is Henry Laycock. See particularly his “Some Questions of Ontology,” Philosophical Review, 81 (1972): 3–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and his “Theories of Matter,” in Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems, edited by Pelletier, F. J., Synthese Language Library (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979), p. 89–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Laycock's work on matter, as concerning these matters of ontology, is to my mind the best in the literature to date. His motivations for PM may be somewhat different from mine.

3 Though Denkel prefaces his argument as aimed “at a general refutation of the claim that the existence of stuff does not entail the existence of particular bodies made of that stuff,” (Denkel, p. 15) the formulation in (a) suggests that his view is that stuff always constitutes (or has portions which constitute, or is the inner part of a portion which constitutes) “stuff particulars,” e.g., atoms or hunks of gold, and may or may not constitute more “familiar” objects like statues or rings. While my discussion tends to focus on such more familiar objects (bodies), I hope it will be clear that it applies to objects in general, and so also to these “cruder” objects Denkel thinks must exist wherever matter does.

4 Denkel, “Matter and Objecthood,” p. 15.

5 It is perhaps not quite right to say that this is exactly the thesis, because some advocates of the primacy of matter, like Laycock, may (additionally) think that matter need not be bounded by a form, thus disagreeing with Denkel's (d) —for instance, the sugar in one's coffee (this is just an example which could be debated; I do not mean to present it as a definitive case). My concern is to show that even without this additional motivation, PM is a thesis which needs to be taken seriously.

6 This usual sense of ‘form’ seems to be the one that Denkel is working with. However, he could also mean ‘Aristotelian form,’ which might be equated with ‘essence.’ I will consider this reading in the final section.

7 Aristotle, , Categories, translated by Ackrill, J. L. (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1963), chap. 5.Google Scholar

8 Denkel's preliminary discussion seems to acknowledge this, so I am a bit reluctant to suggest that (c) really reflects the understanding of the view suggested in the above paragraph. But this then makes it puzzling why he should represent PM as involving the view that matter can exist without form, or at least feels free to suppose that formed matter would suffice for objecthood. Perhaps he thinks that this is just obvious, and that PM advocates have just failed to notice that their view therefore commits them to (c). But more on this below.

9 In this respect, the PM advocate's attitude towards form and objects is very much like Locke's attitude towards deep, causal similiarities among objects and real essences (and so natural kinds). Both of them acknowledge the former (form, and deep causal similarities), but do not see how they have the metaphysical weight needed to make for the latter. “For what is sufficient in the inward Contrivance, to make a new Species?” (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter 6, section 39.) Just as it is no response to Locke, then, to point to the deep explanatory features we have found through science and to say that we have discovered essences (a currently popular practice), so it would be no answer to the PM theorist to point to the world's shape and organization, or even to the fact (if it is one) that we cannot conceive of matter without them.

10 Again, I will come to the Aristotelian sense momentarily.

11 This line is nicely pressed by Nicholas Unwin in “Substance, Essence and Conceptualism,” Ratio, 26 (1984): 41–54.Google Scholar

12 Although perhaps one could hold on to (b) without claiming that any change in shape constituted a change in entity —where there is matter with a form (shape), there is an object, but the only time a form would have to be considered as giving the essence of an object would be when it was the new form of previously unformed matter (which, of course, for opponents of PM would be never). Matter with a shape is always some object —but the kind of object it is need not be given by (all aspects of) its present shape/organization.

13 In addition to the reply which follows, the “friend of matter” may also object that not all statements of the relevant sort are indeed platitudes. For instance, while it may be a platitude that when you have water in a tub, you have a tub of water, the object is the tub, and it is not constituted by the water. One can say, I suppose, that there is a body of water in the tub —but talk is cheap. Clearly, we can always concoct an “object-like” expression out of the matter term. But it is certainly not platitudinous that there is really an object in the tub. Indeed, one may find it rather strained even to say that the water has a boundary at all. Though the tub has an interior boundary, and all the water is within it, it is not obvious that in any meaningful sense, this provides a boundary for the water, at least of a sort which makes for a body of water. And if we focus on the water running through the pipes towards the tub, it looks as if only a very convincing philosophical theory could convince us that this entails some object running through the pipes —that there is a body of water running through the pipes is, at any rate, hardly a platitude. The text that follows, however, is wholly independent of this worry.

14 Let me emphasize that I do not think Denkel is making this move. It is merely one that might be made to argue for the (metaphysical) sufficiency of form for objecthood, and it is of a type which is made elsewhere.

15 Kripke, Saul, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 49.Google Scholar

16 By “an odd type” I mean to emphasize that the use I have in mind is to be distinguished from that in which it turns out that presidents exist (typically) for four or eight years; the entity I am calling ‘the president’ has more complicated persistence conditions.

17 For more on the contrast between real and nominal essentialism, and the resources of the nominal essentialist (i.e., the conventionalist), see my Necessity, Essence and Individuation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar

18 The recent examples could be multiplied, but I do not wish to drive the point into the ground.

19 I would like to thank Thomas A. Blackson and Henry Laycock, as well as a Dialogue referee, for their help in the preparation of this paper.