John Hawthorne's: Superficialism in Ontology

Quoting Oakwimble

He references 'mereological nihilism' (something I hadn't prior outside of existentialist conversations) any insight here would be great. My best guess is that it's a theory that denies that existence of parts- (thanks wikipedia).

Close. Mereology is the study of part-whole relations; or as I like to say, the study of "things and stuff", because "things" is the technical term for discrete objects the likes of which might be a part of a whole or a whole composed of parts, and "stuff" is the technical term for continuous substances that are infinitely divisible and so can't really have discrete parts or wholes.

A mereological nihilist denies that there are such things as composite objects, whole discrete objects made of parts, claiming instead that the only kinds of things are simples, basically "atoms" in the old sense, indivisible objects, and combining them together doesn't make a new composite object, it only makes a collection of such simples, which collection is not itself an object.

So, if for example we took quarks and electrons and so on to be the simples of our ontology, a mereological nihilist would say that there is no such thing as a chair, merely a collection of quarks and electrons and such arranged chair-wise; the chair is not really an composite object with quantum particles as its parts, there are just a lot of simple objects arranged a particular way.


I'm not familiar with this superficialism, and can't readily find an article on it on any philosophy encyclopedias I can find. Can you sum it up for me?

Reply to Pfhorrest Thanks for the clear explanation of mereological nihilism. I came across the same challenge when researching Superficialism and I'm wondering if it's because the position is relatively new.

I'll quote Hawthorne for a definition on the Superficialist argument:

"Taken at face value, ontological disputes are substantive disputes about how the world is [...] Superficialist in ontology think that, at least for very many disputes of this sort, this face value construal of them is incorrect: very often disputants are talking past one another, on account of having attached different meanings to the key terms of the debate" (Hawthorne, 213) https://philpapers.org/rec/HAWSIO

Hawthorne thus proceeds to put forward three arguments, broken into sections, about how this deflationary approach towards ontological disputes is ultimately unfounded. He focuses on the approach developed by Eli Hirsch, of whom he thinks has the most defensible position on Supericialism.

I'm very sympathetic towards the stance that metaphysical disputes are meaningful, and so I'm biased to agree with Hawthorne's arguments. So that you can engage with me I'll do my best to summarize the three sections here, but please note that I'm no longer under any philosophical tutelage and I may unintentionally mischaracterize his argument:

Section (I) Verificationism

Hawthorne asserts that there is a resistance on the part of those who are Superficialist leaning to adopt or be characterized as "full-blooded verificationist." So, rather than stating that ontological disputes are misguided because there's a lack of correspondence between the statements and the concrete world, Superficialist (Hirsch, in particular) apply 'conciliatory translation schemes' to disputes to demonstrate that they are ultimately speaking the same truths just with differing understand of the terms being used.

Hawthorne undermines this by demonstrating that if Superficialist accepts certain ontological disputes then there is no good reason why they should deny others (here he draws up some disputes between endurantist and perdurantist).

Section (II) Intensional Issues Disclaimer: I freaking love this argument. Also one of the arguments I really had to mull over and re-read This section is where Hawthorne utilizes a hypothetical dispute between a mereological nihilist and an anti-nihilist.

According to the Superficialist, because disputants are often just talking past each other then in a debate between an anti-nihilist and a nihilist, Superficialist will view these arguments as being unable to intensionally (this concept was particularly difficult for me to understand) advance over one other.

• After ruminating, I took it to mean that ontologists will propose differing necessary or sufficient conditions for their possible worlds and the objects therein that either overlap and can contradict each other or that the other ontology can deem as being a falsehood and misunderstanding of reality which can be overlooked.

During this section, Hawthorne shows anti-nihilist and nihilists do intentionally advance over one another and can, from this intensional advancement, proceed to have a substantive debate on the differences in their ontologies. As opposed to a Superficialist interpretation which would try to deflate the debate between these two as ultimate saying the same thing using conciliatory translation schemes.

I'll leave it at this for now as these first two sections have a lot to unpack in themselves. I'm really looking forward to your take on this! Thanks again!

Reply to Oakwimble Thanks for the explanation. I guess I have superficialist leanings myself. I don’t find that first argument particularly persuasive (there’s no reason I see why it couldn’t be that some disagreements are substantive and others superficial, or that the superficialities of some arguments would be apparent but not of others). I’ll need more time to digest the second argument.

Reply to Pfhorrest Ha, I needed more time as well for the second argument. Just fyi I sent over the scanned article via dropbox (since I couldn't attach it here).