Matter and Entity Ontology

Fellow autonomists,

I have a question that I have been considering (especially after digesting, with some difficulty, Mr. Stolyarov’s “A Rational Cosmology”) concerning the “entity ontology” that is implicit in Rand’s work. My question is, how do we define the borders of an entity? It seems to me that an entity is, more than anything else, an intellectual focus of sorts. For instance, I can regard a table as a whole and describe and define said entity. Or, I can examine the legs and table top as entities and describe and define them. Or I could regard the Formica finish as an entity and describe and define it. I could even go further and examine the atoms making up the Formica and describe and define them individually. So, is it the fact that we mentally abstract and group matter based on convenient physical borders and properties that makes our ontology entity based? In other words, is it the top-down mentality of knowing what a table is before we examine what its constituent atoms are and knowing that, whatever “weirdness” we may encounter there, the entity we refer to is still a table, and has the same physical properties?

(And, if that is the case, then is quantum mechanics really a problem, or are the assumptions about reality that scientists make based on quantum mechanical observations and measurements the problem?)

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Your question is a good and important one.

“My question is, how do we define the borders of an entity? It seems to me that an entity is, more than anything else, an intellectual focus of sorts. For instance, I can regard a table as a whole and describe and define said entity. Or, I can examine the legs and table top as entities and describe and define them. …”

First a couple of remarks. There is no ontology in Objectivism, by which I mean the body of work created directly by Ayn Rand. Rand recognized only metaphysics, which she reduced to the axiomatic concept “existence exists.” In Objectivism, existence is primary and exists independently of anyone’s knowledge or consciousness of it. Existence itself consists of all existents. What she meant by that exactly in terms of metaphysics is not perfectly clear, because she speaks of substances as existents and states that matter, “can be neither created or destroyed.” The confusion is this: we know physical things are created and destroyed all the time, but if material (physical) existence consists only of physical things, what is it that can be neither created or destroyed. There is no real problem here, only a problem of determining exactly what Ayn Rand intended.

Second, you speak of an “entity ontology” by which I assume you mean, “consists of all existents.” I am questioning this to make sure you are not referring to the nature of “cause” which Objectivism regards as “entity driven” as opposed to “event driven.” The two questions are related.

By the way, I think you are referring to how we “identify” the borders of an entity, not “define,” them, which I’m going to assume unless you correct me.

Your question appears to be primarily epistemological, not ontological. Ontologically, considering only the physical (excluding life, consciousness, and volition for the moment), entities are the objects of direct perception. Our first concepts about the world we perceive are concepts identifying those objects. That identification is epistemological, not ontological. The objects exist and have the nature they do independent of our identification of them.

A table has whatever characteristics it has. When we perceive a table, before we have identified what tables are, or even after we have but are not thinking about it, what we perceive is the table with whatever characteristics it has. Since tables have legs and tops, when perceiving a table we will probably be perceiving at least some of its legs and probably its top (depending on perspective). At this point we have reached the end of what is strictly ontological relative to your question.

The rest is epistemological. You cannot directly perceive anything about existents, you can only perceive the existents. Concepts like “consist ”(a table consists of a flat surface and legs to support it) or “part” (a table leg is part of a table), are abstracted one or more levels away from concepts of direct perception. The observation that the parts of a table are also entities and therefore a table is an entity consisting of other entities in a specific configuration is entirely epistemological.

Now notice, table legs do not exist independently of tables. (They might be called table legs in the process of manufacture, or after being removed from a table, but they are not strictly speaking table legs except as parts of table, otherwise any solid stick could be called a table leg—it might be used for one sometime.) Table tops also do not exist independently of tables. The material for a table top can exist independently of a table, but it is not a table top until it is a part of a table. An existent is whatever all its qualities and attributes are. Table legs and table tops are attributes of tables and as attributes of tables they cannot exist independently of the tables they are the attributes of.

You can no more point to a table leg and say it is an independent entity than you can point to a red apple and say the red is an independent quality. A leg may be removed from a table, but when it is, it is no longer an attribute of the table; you can remove the red (skin) from an apple, but it is no longer an attribute of the apple.

Regi