Philosophical Review

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Christopher Shields
Reviewed work(s):
Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure by Verity Harte
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 114, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 273-277
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043669
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 BOOKREVIEWS

ThePhilosophicalReview,Vol. 114, No. 2 (April 2005)

Verity Harte, Plato on Parts and Wholes:The Metaphysicsof Structure.Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. x, 311.

What is a child's building-block house over and above the blocks themselves?
To some, the answer seems glaringly obvious: nothing. As they will say with
impatient emphasis, the house just is the blocks. To many others, the emphatic
'just is' isjust wrong: it is, they will aver, plainly and easily refuted by the obser-
vation that the house and the blocks have different persistence conditions and
thus different modal properties. As they will note, when an older bully sweeps
his arm through the construction, leaving rubble where the house had been,
the younger child will not be consoled by the suggestion that there was reallyno
differencebetween the house and the blocks, which now exist no less than they
had a moment earlier. A metaphysician might help put things into perspective.
When arranged in the appropriate structure, she observes, the blocks compose
the house, though they are never identicalwithit. After all, she may add, relying
on an observation of Plato's, the blocks are many and the house is one, and one
thing cannot be identical to many (see, for example, Parmenides129c5-d2; cf.
Philebus14c8-e4). Many things have a cardinality of some n>1, while one thing
has a cardinality of-it too is obvious-one.
If Plato relies on the appeal to Leibniz's Law implicit in this sort of argument
for the nonidentity of a thing and its parts, he does not appear prepared to
offer a clear alternative view of how their relation is best conceived in positive
terms. If the house is not identical with the blocks, one wants to know, then with
what is it identical? The blocks plus something more? If so, then what more?
If answers to these questions elude Plato, his approach to them remains
nonetheless worthy of careful consideration. So much, at any rate, is the pur-
port of this excellent and uncommonly engaging study of Plato's mereology by
Verity Harte. In her treatment of him, it emerges, or seems to emerge, that
Plato has plenty to say about the nonidentity of a thing and its parts, but much
less to offer by way of a satisfying positive approach to the difficult questions
about composition and identity he engages. Still, Plato's negative remarks
prove important and instructive, and, suggests Harte, if he does not offer a full-
blown theory of composition and identity, one can nonetheless, if only tenta-
tively, identify the rudiments of an alternative approach in his late works. This
alternative approach might well put us on the right path; and the right path will
be one with requirements never fully appreciated by some of the contemporary
metaphysicians whose views Harte considers by way of framing the issues left
inarticulate in the Platonic dialogues she so deftly investigates.
The dialogues she investigates do not include any single treatise dedicated
to the part-whole relation. On the contrary, as Harte is the first to allow, Plato
never authored any such work, at least not in the transparent way,for example,

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that he undertook to examine the nature of knowledge (epistime)in the Thea-

etetus.Still, questions of part and whole interest and vex him, and we find them
cropping up with increasing frequency and centrality in Plato's thought as he
moves into his last and most mature (and most demanding and most difficult)
philosophical phase. According to Harte, we discern Plato's dominant negative
conclusion-that composition is not identity-primarily in various passages of
the Parmenides,Theaetetus,and Sophist,and his dominant positive contention-
that wholes are structures-in other passages of the Parmenidesand Sophist,
together with sections of the Philebusand Timaeus.Harte sets herself, conse-
quently, a fair bit of philosophical archaeology in her reconstitution of Plato's
views. On the whole, she proves herself well up to the task she undertakes; and
although the Plato who emerges through the extracts acquits himself well on
the negative thesis, he comes up somewhat shy on the positive side.
On the negative side, as Harte presents him, Plato shows himself unhappy
with the thesis that a whole just is its parts-that composition is identity (CI)-
in two dialogues, the Parmenidesand Sophist.In neither case, unfortunately, do
we find him arguing directly that (CI) is problematic. Rather, in the Parmenides,
Plato engages in three discussions of originally opaque connection to (CI), two
of which concern his theory of Forms, initially in relation to a paradox put by
Zeno (127d-130a) and then in a sustained attack on the theory itself (130a-
135d), and the third of which involves a long and, at times, bewildering excur-
sus into four distinct hypotheses, each with two deductions concerning unity.
Though this third section represents the bulk of the dialogue, scholars have
focused on the comparatively accessible, if incendiary, second section, where
Plato's Forms come in for attack. Harte, by contrast, pays close attention to the
first section, where Zeno argues on behalf of monism that the very notion of
plurality is fraught with incoherencies, and to the long third section that
derives difficulty for the notion of unity.
Unfortunately, as she notes with characteristic candor, the "mereological
undercurrent is neither explicit nor developed in the early stages of the dia-
logue" (54). Even so, she makes a good case that an undercurrent is indeed
there to be discerned, by way of what she terms the "pluralizing parts princi-
ple," that is, the contention that if anything has parts, it is many, a principle
that, thus stated, evidently presupposes precisely that composition is identity.
(Those content to allow that there is a freestanding 'is' of constitution will not
embrace the pluralizing parts principle because x can be composedof yl ...
yn
without its being the case that x inherits the cardinality of y,.) Zeno relies on
the pluralizing parts principle when he urges that if plurality is possible, then
anything with parts will be like and unlike, a contradiction sidestepped by the
monism he prefers (Parm. 127el-4). So far, Harte's observation that the mere-
ological undercurrent is inexplicit seems apt, perhaps overly so. It rises to view,
Harte urges, when Plato responds by offering a parallel problem, intended as
an illustration of the sort of position Zeno is pushing. According to the Platonic

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parallel, the way in which plurality leads to things being both like and unlike
consists precisely in their being both one and many (Parm. 129c5-d2). If the
illustration is indeed also a parallel, then it shows how Zeno must be thinking
about constitution and identity: he must be embracing the pluralizing parts
principle and so (CI), upon which it relies. This is supposed to explain how
most things-indeed, everything other than mereological atoms, if there are
such--will be like and unlike. Whole individuals will be identical with their
parts and so will be both one and many; and parts, in their turn, will be identi-
cal with the wholes they constitute, and so will be both many and one.
Harte mines the Parmenidesand then the Sophistfor much more, not all at
this level of conjectural reconstruction, but most of it in one way or another
indirect. (She uses the phrase 'mereological undercurrent' in connection with
the Parmenidesover a dozen times (49, 50, 54,73, 89, 99, 116, 117,122, 123, 267,
268), only then to allow that "the Sophistis not directly concerned with compo-
sition, at least not to the same extent as the Parmenides"(157).) Still, her dis-
cussions are beautifully clear, admirably controlled, and persuasive in the way
that duly tentative reconstructions at their best can be. In any event, the end
result is that (CI) must go, in favor of a new model of composition.
In addition to scattered passages in the Parmenidesand Sophist,the new
model of composition emerges in the Timaeusand Philebus.The new model
rejects (CI) in preference to the view that wholesare structureswhose parts are
dependent upon the contexts of those wholes for their identity. To appreciate
this proposal, it is first of all necessary to distinguish two notions of structure,
one more and one less formal. We might speak of a complex whole as having a
structure,something it might have in common with other complex wholes, in
the way that a series of bungalows on a dreary suburban street might all exem-
plify the same structure. Call this formalstructure.The other notion of structure
is rather being a structuredwhole,something not logically repeatable, as when
someone says that the cathedral in Chartres is the grandest structure in all of
Christendom. Call this concretestructure.(This language is mine, not Harte's,
though she is alert to the difference, for example, on 159 and 161-67; in pas-
sages, however, she seems slightly less secure, 208-9, 268-69.) Concrete struc-
tures have formal structures; formal structures are but do not have the
structures they are. Our ease in moving between these distinct notions is illus-
trated by the first paragraph of this review, where both appear unremarked.
Using this terminology, the new theory of composition to which Plato arrives
has two parts: (i) compound wholes are concrete structures; and (ii) the parts
of concrete structures depend for their identity conditions on the concrete
structures whose parts they are. Thus put, the difficulty of the second thesis
emerges instantly since we do not normally think that the blocks in a child's
building-block construction considered as a concrete structure, depend upon
that structure for their identity conditions. Harte urges that in fact certain sorts
of parts are "structure laden" and that Plato appreciated and sought to exploit

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this point in a series of passages in his late ontology. Structure-ladeness is illus-

trated by the notion of guests at a dinner party, suggests Harte. While and only
while the eight individuals present at a dinner party constitute that very party,
they are dinnerpartyguests.To this extent, being a guest is a part of a whole that
yet depends upon the whole in the sense that "the identity of the parts is deter-
mined only in the context of the whole they compose" (269), or more directly,
"the parts-the guests-are thus not identifiable independently of the struc-
ture of the whole they compose" (161).
Given the centrality of the notion of structure-dependence in Plato's new
model of composition, much more on this notion would be welcome from
Harte. Two pertinent questions arise. First, how precisely are Plato's parts
understood to be structure dependent? Are they somehow analytically depen-
dent upon the wholes whose parts they are? Are they parasitic upon the whole
for their identity conditions in view of some functional identity determina-
tions? Aristotle will later suggest that at least some parts have their identity con-
ditions determined by the whole whose end they serve, so that, for example, an
eye detached from a body is only "homonymously" an eye, in his terminology.
Is Plato to be represented as tending in the same direction? Second, how gen-
eral is the phenomenon of structure-ladeness supposed to be? That is, we may
allow that certain parts are the parts they are only so long as they partially com-
pose some whole-at least insofar as they fall under certain sortals;but all parts
also fall under at least some sortals not tied to the structure whose parts they
are. Consequently, they also have independent identity conditions and so,
unless it can be shown that their essential sortals are structure dependent, the
parts themselves will evidently not be structure-laden in the way Harte's Plato
needs them to be. The blocks in a building-block structure are parts, but
remain blocks when they are no longer parts of a structure that is no more. The
guests at the dinner party are not essentially guests, but are the people they are
before, during, and after the party. How, then, are we to think that structure-
ladeness is suitably general, that all parts of concrete wholes are structure
dependent in the relevant way? Any fully general claim of this sort seems
implausible; any selective approach carries with it a need to discriminate
among the structure-laden and non-structure-laden parts of a concrete struc-
ture in some systematic way. In either case, Plato will owe us some further
account, an account capable of rendering parts essentially tied to structured
wholes.
Focusing especially on the Sophist(261dl-262el), the Philebus(165c5ff. and
234c4ff.), and the whole of the Timaeus,that "offers almost an embarrassment
of riches for one who is interested in the constitution of complex wholes"
(213), Harte seeks to show how Plato approaches the needed positive theory of
structure, primarily as it is revealed in his accounts of combination and mix-
ture. The theory that emerges is not "yet a fully developed theory of composi-
tion," being "better described as an attempt to say what a whole of parts must

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be like" (273). It affirms both the structure-dependence of parts and indeed a

commitment to essentialism about structures (273). Strikingly,insofar as struc-
ture-ladeness is explicated, it involves normative dimensions, such that, for
example, not just any intermingling of parts qualifies as a mixture but only
those that add up in one way or another to something good (271). To the
extent, then, that Plato's mereology is generalizable on Harte's approach, it
will evidently require an antecedent commitment to a pervasively normative
theory of kind individuation, perhaps some form of teleology, which commit-
ment will likely put Plato's approach on a path orthogonal to contemporary
extensionalist mereologies. In this respect, at least, Harte's attempt to place
Plato's mereology into dialogue with contemporary treatments will likely be
frustrated; and however that may be, the positive mereology held to be incho-
ate in Plato's later writings remains crucially underdeveloped in these respects.
That said, Harte is right to frame her discussion of Plato on parts and wholes
in terms of some alternative contemporary mereologies. Her doing so brings
welcome and uncommon clarity to a series of issues in Platonic scholarship
rarely treated with the depth and precision Harte brings to bear. The net result
is a work of estimable philosophical scholarship, one that will be studied with
profit by all students of Platonic metaphysics.
CHRISTOPHERSHIELDS

Lady MargaretHall, Oxford

ThePhilosophicalReview,Vol. 114, No. 2 (April 2005)

John Preston and Mark Bishop, editors, Viewsinto the ChineseRoom:New Essays
on Searleand ArtificialIntelligence.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp.
xx, 300.

The anthology begins with a lengthy introduction by John Preston that dis-
cusses the key intellectual developments leading up to John Searle's formula-
tion of his famous Chinese Room Argument (CRA). It then situates the
contributions of the volume's other contributors relative to the multifaceted
discussion that ensued. Excellent though it is, this essay would have benefited
from a slightly more detailed discussion of Shank and Abelson's (1977) SAM
model of story understanding for this is precisely the kind of program that
Searle imagines himself running from inside the Chinese Room. Another
minor drawback is Preston's attempt to motivate the book's extended treat-
ment of the CRA by claiming that its target, Strong Al, is a core commitment
for a great many cognitive scientists. This is not even close to being the case
(Waskan 2003, 648), but the CRA is still important enough to warrant the
book's extended treatment of it. After all, particular theories of mind limit the

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