Organon F
Volume 27, November 2020, Issue 4, Pages 504–521
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article
Fregean Monism: A Solution to the Puzzle of Material Constitution
Soo Lam Wong
https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27406
The puzzle of material constitution can be expressed in at least two ways. First, how can the constituting object and the constituted object, which are materially and spatially coincident, be regarded as different objects? Second, how can the constituting object and the constituted object, which are qualitatively distinct, be regarded as identical objects? Monists argue that the constituting and constituted objects are identical since they are materially and spatially coincident and the property differences between then are simply differences in description, perspective or context. In contrast, pluralists argue that the constituting and constituted objects are not identical even if they are materially and spatially coincident since they are qualitatively distinct. This paper proposes a solution to the puzzle of material constitution called ‘Fregean Monism’ (FM), and shows that it can better account for the property differences between the constituting and constituted objects without the need to regard them as two distinct objects. On the FM view, the puzzle of material constitution is partly a semantic puzzle and partly a metaphysical puzzle, and shows how a solution to the semantic part of the puzzle, based on the Fregean distinction between sense and reference, can yield a satisfactory solution to the metaphysical part of the puzzle. The key idea is that while the reference of a term picks out both the referent object and referent properties, the sense of the term determine which referent properties are picked out.
Constitution; Fregean; identity; monism; pluralism; reference; sense.
Author
Soo Lam Wong
Affiliation
Singapore University of Social Sciences
Address
Singapore University of Social Sciences, Centre for University Core, 463 Clementi Road, Singapore 599494
Received
1 October 2019
Accepted
24 June 2020
Published online
17 October 2020
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Wong, S.L. (2020). Fregean Monism: A Solution to the Puzzle of Material Constitution. Organon F, 27(4), 504–521. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27406
Chicago
Wong, Soo Lam. 2020. "Fregean Monism: A Solution to the Puzzle of Material Constitution." Organon F 27 (4): 504–521. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27406
Harvard
Wong, S.L. (2020). Fregean Monism: A Solution to the Puzzle of Material Constitution. Organon F, 27(4), pp. 504–521. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2020.27406
© Soo Lam Wong
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