Heidegger, Analytic Metaphysics, and the Being of Beings

Inquiry, 45, 35–58

Heidegger, Analytic Metaphysics, and the Being of Beings Matthew Ratcliffe University College Cork

This essay begins with an outline of the early Heidegger’s distinction between beings and the Being 1 of those beings, followed by a discussion of Heideggerian teleology. It then turns to contemporary analytic metaphysics to suggest that analytic metaphysics concerns itself wholly with beings and does not recognize distinct forms of questioning concerning what Heidegger calls Being. This difference having been clarified, studies of identity and individuation in the analytic tradition are examined and it is demonstrated that such inquiries have far more in common with Heidegger than one might initially suspect. Indeed, it turns out that much of what the early Heidegger says about Being is tacitly presupposed by the workings of certain beingcentric metaphysical projects in the analytic tradition. The discussion concludes with the suggestion that the central difference between the two projects should be understood as one of emphasis and that Heidegger’ s discussion of Being and a realist metaphysics in the analytic tradition can complement each other as aspects of a broader, more unified philosophical inquiry.

I. Heidegger on the Being of Beings2 I am currently looking at an empty coffee mug. It is a certain kind of thing, it is in a particular place, and I take it to be real, by which I mean that I conceive of it as persisting regardless of my intentional relationship with it. The world is Ž lled with myriad different beings like the mug. There are cars, birds, rocks, houses, and computers, for example. All have in common an ‘otherness’ or independence from me, are of a certain type, and have a certain location. Of any such being we can ask ‘what is it?; where is it?; is it really what I think it is?’ Beings knit together in various ways (of which I shall say more in II). For example, I do not conceive of my computer as entirely independent from the printer, the notes I refer to, and a range of other items that relate to my current activities. For convenience, I shall call the interconnected totality of extant beings ‘the world’. This is, at least, what many analytic metaphysicians would take ‘the world’ to be.3 As a metaphysician, given the conceivability of ‘world as a collection of interrelated beings’, I might inquire as to which entities are genuinely real and can exist independently of my intentional relation to them; I might inquire as # 2002 Taylor & Francis

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to which entities are most fundamental in my ‘map’ of the real, and I might inquire as to the extent to which any metaphysics can approximate the structure of reality. All these questions concern beings which have ‘whatness’, ‘whereness’, and ‘otherness from oneself’. However, Heidegger (BT, BPP) suggests that there are important philosophical questions which we neglect if we conŽ ne ourselves solely to a study of beings (Seiende). These questions concern Being (Sein). An understanding of Being is what must already be the case for a contexture of beings, an objective world, to be intelligible: In the end something is given which must be given if we are to be able to make things accessible to us as beings and comport ourselves toward them, something which, to be sure, is not but which must be given if we are to experience and understand any beings at all. (BPP § 2, p. 10)

Heidegger is not suggesting that we must have an implicit understanding of some thing, which is causally or epistemologically required prior to an explicit understanding of beings. He is asking a kind of primordial semantic question, by which I mean that he is inquiring into the implicit semantic structures which are prior to the sense of any explicit conception of anything and are preconditionally required to render beings intelligible as what they are: What must already be the case for a real world to be thinkable? What is already required for us to be able to give sense to ‘otherness’, ‘extantness’, ‘whatness’, ‘whereness’, ‘reality’? Hence Being, which is prior to the intelligibility of beings, itself has none of the characteristics of beings; ‘the Being of beings “is” not itself a being’ (BT § 2, p. 26). Being is not strictly speaking real, but then neither is it unreal; it is required for any conception of reality to be intelligible and is itself prior to such distinctions. 4 Hence inquiring into the nature of Being does not entail that what we take to be real is not in fact real or that there is some more fundamentally real thing-in-itself that lies beyond our everyday sense of reality. Being concerns what must be the case for questions concerning whether the world is real or unreal to make sense; it constitutes the very sense of such questions as opposed to undermining them. To question Being is not to deny that questions concerning what is real can be legitimately asked. Indeed such questions have the same sense that they always did. In other words, the understanding of Being is a wholly different exercise, which can happily coexist with a realist inquiry and is presupposed by the very intelligibility of such inquiry, an observation which I shall return to in V. Hence Heidegger places a Ž rm distinction between Being and beings, which he calls ‘the ontological difference’. The questioning of Being cannot imply scepticism, idealism or any other doctrine concerning our relationship to reality, as for such debates to even make sense, an understanding of Being

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is presupposed. It is required for any claim about the world or our relationship to the world to be intelligible: ‘If we did not understand what reality means, then the real would remain inaccessible’ (BPP § 2, p. 10).5 Being is thus fundamental or, rather, original and cannot be approached by any form of questioning that simply presupposes the intelligibility of beings. I shall now take a closer look at some of the speciŽ cs of Heidegger’s account of Being. My aim in so doing is to draw out a number of interrelated claims that are central to the account, rather than to offer a comprehensive exegesis of any part of the early Heidegger’s position. The relevance of these claims for contemporary analytic metaphysics is discussed in IV.

II. Heidegger, Being, and Constitutive Teleology If Being is something given prior to any confrontation with beings, it is by no means clear how we could ever come to an explicit understanding of Being or even begin to question Being. If an understanding of Being is always in the background, how can we allow that understanding to explicitly show itself? If all that we do presupposes Being, how can we ever get at it? Heidegger recognizes this problem and goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the history of philosophy is being-centric; that our metaphysical inquiries have invariably taken features of extant beings (Vorhandenes), such as ‘whatness’ or essence, existence as extantness, res extensa and res cogitans (BPP § 4, p. 15, and all of Part One) to be most fundamental to our understanding of world. Questions concerning Being collapse into accounts of the most fundamental features of beings, with the result that any sense of a distinctive questioning of Being is lost. For example, Kant is portrayed as distinguishing Being from beings with his claim that existence is not a real predicate (‘Kant basically wants to say that Being is not a being’ [BPP § 9, p. 55]) but as failing to reach a fuller understanding of Being, confusing it with location and adding an ambiguous perceptual criterion. The Kantian categories serve to constitute our sense of the extant world and can thus be construed as an attempt to characterize Being – that which must already be the case for the world to be thinkable. But Heidegger claims that Kant still ends up presupposing an understanding of Being, for example in his construal of the thing-in-itself as an ineffable reality which our constituted phenomenal world can only aspire to and in falling into a division between subject and object, whose characterization presupposes a conception of extantness (Vorhandenheit ): In the concept of the thing-in-itself, whether or not it is knowable in its whatness, the traditional ontology of extantness is already contained. [BPP 14, p. 147] [and for

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Kant] the question of the Being of the Dasein6 as such is simply not raised. The subject remains with the indifferent characterization of being an extant entity. (BPP § 14, p. 153) 7

So Heidegger sees Kant’s account of Being as lapsing back into the extant and thus misconstruing the nature of Being. 8 He claims that previous thinkers have all in various ways misunderstood Being or presupposed it by taking the conceivability of an extant world as a given. All accounts of Being, he suggests, eventually fall back into an ontology of beings, which is invariably taken as an implicit given. How then are we to investigate Being? How are we to get past an implicit and all-pervasive acceptance of an extant ontology, a sense of whose Being is simply presupposed? Heidegger begins by questioning the assumption that extant beings (Vorhandenes) are in fact primary and fundamental in our understanding of world. Why should we assume that an account of the Being of beings should emphasize one kind of being over all others; those beings that are epitomized by the detached, theoretical entities which the objective sciences characterize? To take the emphasis away from extant beings, Heidegger observes that, in much of our everyday interaction with the world, we are not so much concerned with detached, theoretical entities but with that which is available or ready-to-hand (zur Hand); a holistic matrix of equipment (Zeug) with which we are inextricably involved. Beings only stand out as extant beings against this background of equipment. As Heidegger puts it, ‘the presence-athand [Vorhandenheit] which makes itself known is still bound up in the readiness-to-hand [Zuhandenheit] of equipment’(BT § 16, p. 104). A tool is transparently available to us as a piece of equipment entwined in a framework of goals, purposes, and actions. Only when it breaks, goes missing, malfunctions, or can’t for some reason be smoothly and implicitly integrated into a holistic teleological network of equipment, does it show itself as an extant being. Thus we are actively entwined with the world as it is ontically closest to us and extantness is only conceivable when the world ‘rebels’ against our projects, exposing a project as a teleological structure that reveals the extant only through its collapse (e.g. BT § 16, p. 105). Given the ontic primacy of involvement with equipment over contemplation of extant entities, it seems that, contrary to historically prevalent assumptions, 9 an inquiry into the Being of beings will be better off starting with equipment rather than with theoretical entities. So Heidegger asks, What must already be the case for holistic frameworks of equipment to be intelligible? What is required to give meaning to the Being of equipment? He claims that equipment ‘is constituted by a contexture of the what-for, inorder-to’ (BPP § 15, pp. 163–4); that ‘the functionality that goes with chair, table, window is exactly that which makes the thing what it is’ (BPP § 15, p.

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164). We do not come across an equipmental being Ž rst as an objective entity and only then as having a certain function or use. Instead a ‘speciŽ c functionality whole is pre-understood’ (BPP, p. 164). In order to conceive of any x as a piece of equipment within a broader equipmental contexture – in order to conceive of it as the thing that it is – a background of functionality is invariably presupposed. Equipment is thus constituted 10 by its functionality: The speciŽ c thisness of a piece of equipment, its individuation , if we take the word in a completely formal sense, is not determined primarily by space and time in the sense that it appears in a determinate space- and time-position. Instead, what determines a piece of equipment as an individual is its equipmental character and equipmental contexture. ... A being is not what and how it is, for example, a hammer, and then in addition something ‘with which to hammer’. Rather, what and how it is as this entity, its whatness and howness, is constituted by this in-order-to as such, by its functionality. (BPP § 20, pp. 292–3)

Heidegger then contends that functionality itself presupposes a more basic teleology; ‘all functionality is grounded in a more original “for-the-sake-ofwhich” ’ (BPP § 20, p. 295). This teleology is an inextricable aspect (or moment) of a holistic structure that he terms ‘Care’ (Sorge) and Care is presupposed by the intelligibility of any being. What about the Being of extant beings? Though Heidegger places an emphasis on the practical over the theoretical, it is clear that he does not seek to ground all theoretical cognition in the practical; he does not want to claim that Vorhandenheit is constituted by Zuhandenheit . Just as attention to the phenomenology of Zuhandenheit suggests that ‘to reconstruct the Thing of use in terms of the Thing of Nature is an ontologically questionable undertaking’ at best (BT § 20, p. 132), it is just as misleading to ground all theory in practice. All theoretical cognition is somehow ‘bound up’ (BT § 16, p. 104) in practical cognition but it is not constituted by it. So how does Heidegger conceive of the relationship between Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit? The answer, I think, lies with Care (Sorge). Heidegger makes quite clear that his conception of Care does not imply an ultimately pragmatist account of beings and their Being: Care, as a primordial structural totality, lies ‘before’ [“vor”] every factical ‘attitude’ and ‘situation’ of Dasein, and it does so existentially a priori; this means that it always lies in them. So this phenomenon by no means expresses a priority of the ‘practical’ attitude over the theoretical. When we ascertain something present-at-hand by merely beholding it, this activity has the character of Care just as much as does a ‘political’ action or taking a rest and enjoying oneself. ‘Theory’ and ‘practice’ are possibilities of Being for an entity [Seiende] whose Being must be deŽ ned as ‘Care’. (BT § 41, p. 238)

So Heidegger contends that both theoretical entities and practical engagement are constituted by Care, and an essential moment of Care is its teleological

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structure. Care incorporates concern (Besorgen) for beings, both practical and theoretical, and concern ‘includes the understanding of a totality of involvements, and this understanding is based upon a prior understanding of the relationships of the “in-order-to,” the “towards-which,” the “towardsthis,” and the “for-the-sake-of ...” (BT § 69, p. 415). Hence from Heidegger I draw the claim that all beings are constituted by teleological backgrounds, which are a precondition for the sense of both theoretical and practical beings and the sense of distinction we make between them; ‘Care ... as concernful solicitude, so primordially and wholly envelops Dasein’s Being that it must already be presupposed as a whole when we distinguish between theoretical and practical behaviour’ (BT § 60, pp. 347–8). It is only when these teleological backgrounds are mistakenly construed as extant that the spectre of pragmatism arises.11 The fact that the extant is constituted by meaninggiving teleologies does not make the extant itself in any sense teleological or practical, just as – by way of analogy – the rules of chess that constitute chess entities do not imply that chess entities are themselves rules. Constitutive background teleologies are not themselves extant beings but are instead conditions of sense for all beings; presupposed by the intelligibility of beings. In what follows, I shall refer to these meaning-constituting teleologies – the ‘in-order-to’, the ‘towards-which’, the ‘towards-this’, and the ‘for-the-sakeof’ of Care – as teleological webs. To summarize, I have drawn the following set of interconnected claims from Heidegger in respect of teleological webs: a. Both theoretical and practical beings presuppose teleological webs for their sense. b. Teleological webs are not themselves extant beings but are presupposed by the conceivability of beings. c. Teleological webs constitute the sense of the theoretical/practical distinction and so don’t entail pragmatism. (Theoretical beings are constituted by teleological webs as precisely theoretical and not practical.) d. It is easier to see the signiŽ cance of teleological webs once we retract from the historically sedimented dogma that theoretical beings are fundamental. e. In giving sense to beings, teleological webs are partially constitutive of our understanding of Being. It is also worth noting that, for Heidegger, the Dasein (ourselves) that constitutes beings, and is thus the source of an understanding of Being, is not in any familiar sense a subject. Teleological webs cannot be understood as the property of any individual. In the constitutive frameworks that give sense to beings, the self and others are inextricably entangled. Dasein is, if you like, intrinsically intersubjective, inextricably bound to other Dasein; ‘the world of

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Dasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]’ (BT § 26, p. 155). And our sense of world is inextricably tied up with sense-giving communal structures, which incorporate goals, values, and the teleological ‘for-the-sake-of-which’. Finally, one might inquire as to how we are able to reveal such relationships of constitution. In brief, Heidegger’s proposal is much more modest than the Husserlian epoche´, which was intended to neutralize naive acceptance of an extant world all in one go and look upon all relationships of constitution from a kind of God’s eye phenomenological perspective. Heidegger, in rejecting the primacy of any sort of privileged theoretical attitude, also rejects the possibility of a privileged theoretical standpoint from which we are able to look upon the meaning structure of experience. His view is instead that we reveal aspects of this structure through a process of interpretation, which is never complete but is instead circular in nature. In interpreting a state of affairs, we constitute it afresh and reveal previously hidden features which in turn call for a new interpretation. Our understanding of Being is revealed, if you like, a bit at a time, via a process that lacks Husserlian Ž nal certainties and which is carried out from within, rather than from some kind of universally privileged phenomenological standpoint (see, e.g., BT § 32). For Heidegger, the Husserlian epoche´ is an artiŽ cial retraction from beings, an aversion that serves merely to distort our understanding of Being. Instead of adopting any such distorting stance, he thinks that we should take beings as we Ž nd them and begin our interpretation from there. In what follows, I concentrate on four central themes that have been outlined in the discussion so far: a. Our sense of an extant world presupposes teleological webs. b. Teleological webs are not beings but give sense to beings and thus re ect something of the Being of those beings. c. Questions about Being are distinct from but not incompatible with questions about beings. If we concern ourselves solely with beings, the sense of such questions is lost. d. The structure of interpretation is such as to facilitate some illumination of Being. Having outlined these key Heideggerian themes, I now turn to contemporary analytic metaphysics. I suggest that, though analytic metaphysics generally either ignores or explicitly dismisses Heideggerian Being, all of the above claims are tacitly implied by studies of identity and individuation in the analytic tradition, even though they are not explicitly addressed by such studies. Hence we can actually draw on analytic metaphysics to formulate an argument in support of Heidegger’s claims. This suggests that, despite the generally perceived schism between analytic metaphysics and the continental Heidegger, these are not in fact incommensurable strands of inquiry but

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complementary aspects of a more general problematic. Hence my conclusion will cast a hopeful light upon the spectre of the so-called continental/analytic schism in philosophy.

III. A Metaphysics of Beings Broadly speaking, the goals of analytic 12 metaphysics are to explore and chart the ultimate structure of reality and/or to assess the extent to which our claims about that structure can be taken at face value. For example, Lowe (1998, ch. 1) begins by outlining various views of what metaphysics is/ought to be. He takes the line that ‘metaphysics has been thought of as the systematic study of the structure of reality [and] that is the view of it which I should like to support’ (p. 2). Lowe notes that others have adopted a weaker position concerning the status of metaphysical inquiry. He considers four views – relativism, scientism (referred to as ‘naturalism’ by its devotees), neoKantianism, and semanticism. All of these, he claims, enfeeble metaphysics by contesting, in various ways, the conviction that it can describe or approximate the structure of reality. Hence metaphysics, as Lowe describes it (and indeed as most metaphysicians would agree), either concerns itself in some way with what’s ultimately and fundamentally real or retreats from the real to make less substantive claims. All these projects are being-centric from a Heideggerian perspective. They inquire into the nature of a reality of beings or de ate such inquiry. Lowe envisions a comprehensive metaphysics to be a framework of different interconnected kinds of being, some more fundamental than others and some absolutely basic. He discusses hierarchical categories of being, that capture the most fundamental, essential elements of reality, from which all other ontological commitments are derived. Hence his use of the term being is quite distinct from Heidegger’s conception of Being. Lowe’s categories apply to reality; they are the most fundamental constituents of reality. However, they do not serve to constitute the meaning of the real in the Heideggerian sense. They are not prior to reality but are the most fundamental elements in a map of reality: Entities belong to different ontological categories on account of their different existence-conditions and/or identity conditions. The categories are related to one another in a hierarchical arrangement. The topmost ontological category in the hierarchy is, thus, the most general ontological category of all – the category of beings or entities. (pp. 179–80)1 3

Lowe’s introduction provides a succinct summary of the various goals of analytic metaphysics. In all cases, the concern is with beings or being but

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Being is not approached. We are either concerned with mapping out the most fundamental features of reality or with a somewhat de ated project which retreats from the real and instead describes what we take to be real without committing ourselves to any claim to the effect that such things actually are real. However, the question ‘What must already be the case for any conception of the real or extant to make sense?’ is not asked, and the idea that there could be something prior to our sense of real, which is not itself a constituent of the real, is not considered (other than in the Kantian mould discussed earlier which is regarded as a retreat from the real). Characteristics such as ‘whatness’, ‘whereness’, and ‘otherness’ may all turn out to be fundamental features of being or reality. But Heidegger’s claim is that such characteristics are themselves constituted by something which itself has none of the features of beings and is constitutively prior to any conception of the character of beings. In what follows, I shall not criticize projects such as Lowe’s. Indeed I will argue that they are perfectly coherent and worthwhile, and that there are several different aims that a metaphysics of beings can aspire to, the aim of charting the structure of reality being one of them. However, I shall suggest that such projects can also make room for a distinct but complementary mode of inquiry concerning Being, and that the possibility of such inquiry can in fact be inferred from the workings of certain being-centric metaphysical projects within the analytic tradition.

IV. Identity, Individuation, and the Revelation of Being An important part of analytic metaphysics is the study of identity and individuation: what makes something the thing that it is and not something else? The fact that an entity (A) can suffer certain changes and still remain the same A whilst going through others and not remaining the same A suggests that for every entity there are some features that are essential to its being and others which are not. There is something that makes my cat Huxley the speciŽ c cat he is, as opposed to Blofeld the cat, and there is also something more general that makes him a cat at all. Such observations have led philosophers to search for conditions or criteria of identity for entities. As Lowe (1998, p. 29) explains, ‘one guarantee that something possess determinate identity conditions is that it falls under a general concept which supplies a deŽ nite criterion for its instances. (Such a concept may be classiŽ ed as a “sortal”)’. Identity criteria are supplied by general concepts of what it is to be an A, which determine whether x is an A and whether x is the same A as y. Identity criteria, as Lowe points out, are ‘logico-metaphysical principles’ as opposed to heuristic or epistemic devices (pp. 44–45). In what follows, I shall explore metaphysical arguments concerning the

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persistence of entities through change, the kind of events a given A can endure and still remain the same A. Metaphysical arguments and thoughtexperiments often serve to ambiguate or alter our intuitions concerning whether a thing can endure certain changes, our sense of what makes it the thing that it is. I will inquire as to how they manipulate our intuitions. What do they incorporate (implicitly or explicitly) in order to sway our decisions? Contrary to accounts which claim that there is something inherent in a thing which makes it the thing it is – some kind of essential property of that thing which is revealed by metaphysical inquiry – I will try to show that our decisions concerning identity and persistence are ultimately determined by tacit teleological webs, which constitute beings and give sense to our conceptions of the kinds of things that make up the real. These teleological webs are incorporated into the various scenarios that metaphysicians concoct to sway our intuitions one way or the other; they are presuppositional backgrounds of interpretation that themselves serve to differently constitute beings. Hence, though analytic metaphysics tends to identify being with essence and fails to acknowledge any further distinctive sense of Being, I will argue the claim that essence is transcendentally constituted by teleological webs and suggest that this claim is actually implied by the possibility of such studies. In a nutshell, being (essence) is constituted by Being (Heideggerian). Let us consider the well-known and much discussed problem of the Ship of Theseus (e.g. Smart [1972], Scaltsas [1980], Wiggins [1980], Lowe [1983]). In its most generic formulation, the problem runs as follows: The Ship of Theseus is in continuous use over a number of years and undergoes a great deal of wear and tear. As parts of the ship fail, they are replaced one by one until eventually none of the material from the original ship (A) remains. Is the resulting ship (B) the same ship as A or a new ship? Intuitions generally lean to the former until we add the twist that all the old parts have been stored and reassembled to form a complete ship (C). In this case, intuition might suggest that the reassembled parts are identical with A. However, this is at odds with A being B in the absence of C as, despite the presence of C, the relationship between A and B is the same in both cases. If we take as a premise that A cannot be identical with both B and C,14 we are left with a situation where our intuitions swing both ways. In one case, continuity of form and use appear sufŽ cient. However, continuity of parts also appears to be important and arguably overrides the continuity of form criterion when we bring Ship C into consideration. In order to resolve the matter and suggest a solution that complements our intuitions in all cases, philosophers have resorted to a number of thoughtexperiments. For example, Smart (1972) concocts a story around the problem in which a shipbuilder is required to complete two jobs. One client wants total replacement of ship parts and the other wants a brand new ship made from seasoned timber, so the cunning shipbuilder takes all the parts from A to build

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a new ship B, whilst replacing the parts as he goes. The story then has a legal twist in which one of the ships is accidentally destroyed and a Judge has to decide whose ship still exists. Smart comes to the judicial conclusion that continuity of form will invariably override continuity of parts and that the new parts are to be identiŽ ed with the old ship. In contrast, Scaltsas (1980) tells a story where two ships of identical dimensions and form, made from the same constituents, set sail from Piraeus to Delos. The only recognizable difference between the ships is that one is blue and the other is red. However, only one is the Sacred Ship, which always has and always will carry the Holy Relics. The people recognize it as such because of its colour. En route, the Head Priest, having read Smart and realized the overriding importance of form in considerations of identity, decides to swap all the planks between ships, one at a time, and when the ships arrive in Delos, the people are confused by the fact that the relics, which were in a blue ship, are now in a red ship. The Priest calmly explains what was done and that identity has been preserved. However, the people are outraged and claim that the red ship is absolutely not the Ship of Theseus. Nothing the Priest can say will persuade them otherwise.15 Scaltsas concludes by suggesting that we simply have no consistently reliable identiŽ cation code for things like ships. Hence the example is a genuine paradox. Interestingly, he notes that ‘discovering the lack of such a reidentiŽ cation code is discovering something very signiŽ cant about our intuitions and habits concerning decision making on artifact identity’ (p. 15). This is an observation I shall pursue now by asking – how is it that our intuitions concerning whether A is the same thing as B can be made to oscillate like this; how do these two scenarios lead us to different conclusions concerning that which makes a thing the thing that it is? I suggest that each scenario sets up a tacit teleological background of goals, functions, and values, which serves to constitute the extant differently. Effectively, our sense of the kinds of things that reality can accommodate is different in each case. In Smart’s scenario, a crucial observation is that he feels obliged to point out that the replacement of parts operation is cheaper than building a new ship from scratch. It is curious that this needs to be mentioned, as Ž nancial considerations surely do not in uence metaphysical decisions. However, this proviso gives the shipbuilder’s actions some kind of rationale. It helps to set up a background of values and purposes and it is this tacit background which, I suggest, serves to constitute our sense of identity in such cases. Different values, functions, and projects also slip into Scaltsas’s scenario. The Ship of Theseus is a national treasure and is valued as such. National treasures simply do not endure replacement of parts like any old maritime transport vessel. In this case, ‘what makes x the x it is’ is not its being a ship but its being a historical treasure. Whether we regard x as any old ship or primarily as the Ship of Theseus will determine our judgments concerning persistence through change. What

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makes a thing ‘the thing it is’ is determined, at least in part, by background teleologies that serve to constitute – to give sense to – a certain thing or type of thing. What I have said so far might seem resolvable via something like Wiggins’s (1980) thesis of the sortal dependence of identity; ‘everything that exists is a this such’ (p. 15). Our background interests and purposes could arguably serve to select a type of thing. In one case, we might have something like ‘transport vessel’ in mind and in another ‘historical artifact’. Under any sortal, if A is identical with B then A is absolutely identical with B. However, in the ship case we might be dealing with two different sortals which have become confused and would be better viewed as distinct overlapping kinds of entity. We could say that there are two different things, a ship and a historical treasure. In thought-experiments, we simply pull these apart, exposing two different kinds of thing. Thus one might say that A (historical artifact) is identical with C, whereas A (ship) is identical with B and hence, as identity is absolute, A (artifact) has never been identical with A (ship). Whereas such a solution might seem compelling in cases such as vases and lumps of clay or persons and biological organisms, it lacks appeal in the case of the ship. In both of the above thought-experiments, we have a choice between B=A and C=A. In one case we want to choose B and in another C; hence the plausibility of the claim that different sortals (A1 and A2) are in play and that there are two different A’s. However, the problem with the Ship of Theseus is that both sortals (A1 and A2) don’t seem to be able to come into play at the same time. At the beginning of each story, there is clearly one thing and not two things that somehow overlap. This is because The Ship of Theseus is the Ship of Theseus and not some historical relic that also happens to be a ship. Part of its very intelligibility as a relic is associated with its ‘ship-hood’. It is an important relic because it was sailed by Theseus; its historical signiŽ cance and its functionality as a ship are tied together and we cannot convincingly tear the two sortals apart. In each story, our intuitions may swing one way or the other but will not accommodate both. If we try to do so, we may run the risk of postulating a near inŽ nite variety of increasingly dubious sortal distinctions, such as ‘thing that was for sailing in but is now more important as a relic’. I suggest as an alternative answer that what these thought-experiments show us is that tacit teleological webs serve not only to select but also to constitute sortals, effectively determining the possible kinds of being which together make up our sense of the real. These teleological webs are not static but subject to disruption and reinterpretation. Each of the stories above incorporates a different background teleology which serves to alter our sense of what reality can contain. Different teleological webs constitute different kinds of being, which are able to endure different kinds of change – a ‘planksship’ and a ‘form-ship’. Relative to a given teleological web, a certain kind of

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entity B may be intelligible whereas C is not. In other cases, C but not B will be intelligible. To illustrate this claim, consider a scenario where I build two identical (meaning perceptually indistinguishable) ships on a beach. I then spend several weeks exchanging all the parts back and forth and then a few more weeks swapping around a few of the parts at random. Then I ask you which ship is which. The intuitive, pre-philosophical response is to simply resist the question as absurd and I believe this to be the right response. Artifacts such as ships are primarily intelligible relative to a certain role. We build them for that role; they persist in that role. However, messing about on a beach with planks of wood has no relevance to the ‘ship-hood’ of ships. If I spend Ž fty years messing about with two ships and some planks, the bemused spectator is likely to suggest that the two ships constitute one entity – a toy for a deranged maniac – as opposed to two ships. Without use as a ship or signiŽ cance as a relic, the whole question of whether there are two objects, one object, the same object, etc., just breaks down. Eventually we are led to reinterpret the scenario in terms of a different set of projects and purposes, with the result that different sortals are rendered intelligible. Tacit networks of goals and projects – what Heidegger describes as the ‘ “in-order-to,” the “towardswhich,” the “towards-this,” and the “for-the-sake-of ” ’ (BT § 68, p. 415) – determine whether we individuate one thing or two things and whether we are able to conceive of certain kinds of thing at all. Artifacts have their place in a network of equipment relative to which they are individuated. Teleological webs are prior to the possibility of their individuation and thought-experiments incorporate different teleologies which serve to differently constitute them. Hence I claim that the activity of destabilizing our sense of the extant – showing how our intuitions concerning individuation and endurance through change can waver – also serves to reveal the character of that which underlies our sense of the extant; a teleological framework which itself has none of the characteristics of beings but can be brought to light by disturbing and reinterpreting it. Thoughtexperiments do not reveal an underlying ambiguity in our concepts; they reconstitute our sense of what’s real by covertly revising a teleological background of interpretation that plays a constitutive role. I suggest that this is why, as Smart (1980, p. 152) notes, ‘the cases of con ict are so rare in everyday life that we have not had the need to compare the various sufŽ ciency conditions and determine the relative strength of each in cases of con ict’. Everyday life brings with it a background of projects and purposes via which reality is constituted. Philosophy strips away or manipulates that constitutive context to disturb our sense of the extant. In the light of this suggestion, it is interesting to consider the in uence of our technological capacities in determining whether an entity continues to exist. What’s the difference between the destruction of A and the temporary

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disassembling of A? If I dismantle my watch completely and spread it out across the table, you might be tempted to say, knowing of my horological ineptitude, that the watch has now ceased to exist. But if a watch repairer were to do the same thing, the watch would be ‘temporarily disassembled’; it would not have ceased to exist. To take a more far-fetched example, if I smash a beer glass down to its atoms, you would of course conclude that the glass is no longer with us. However, consider a futuristic pub with a highly efŽ cient beer glass cleaning mechanism: dirty glasses are reduced to their atomic constituents. These are then matched up with an atomic map of the glass’s structure which was recorded when the glass was completely clean. Any extraneous atoms are disposed of and only the original atoms are put back together in their original organization. 16 This operation is carried out hundreds of times a day and is absolutely routine. When a glass is reduced to its atoms, I suggest that we would want to say that it was ‘being cleaned’ rather than ceasing to exist. Even though in both cases the glass is in an identical state when reduced to its atoms, the contrast in intuitions concerning persistence in such cases remains a powerful one. I suggest that this is because our background of accepted projects, functions, goals, and purposes serves to constitute our very sense of thinghood and persistence. 17 Examples of these discrepancies abound in science Ž ction, an obvious one being the teleportation devices used in Star Trek. Reduce me to atoms and I’m history; do it to Spock and he’s ‘beaming down to the surface’. As Lowe (1983, p. 230) observes of such cases, ‘our technological capabilities are a relevant consideration in such matters’. Wiggins (1980, p. 19) notes similarly that ‘what counts to any appreciable degree against the persistence of a clock is only an irretrievable loss of the time-keeping function, or a loss of function which is, if not irretrievable, then Ž nally and irrevocably unretrieved’. However, if irretrievability depends on sets of embedded technical practices and teleological webs, the claim that, in the case of artifacts, persistence is constituted by established prior domains of functionality seems difŽ cult to avoid. One might argue that artifacts are a special case in which conventionalism or a degree of conventionalism is the norm and that identity, persistence, and individuation are more clear-cut in other domains. This is an option that Wiggins chooses in suggesting that, even though we should avoid unqualiŽ ed conventionalism, artifacts are still subject to a high degree of ambiguity. He considers the Ship of Theseus case and notes: [S]uppose it were decided ... to erect a monument to Theseus and to put his ship upon the monument. Surely some people would say that the ship put together from discarded planks was the right one to raise up there. And dispute might break out about this matter between priests who favoured the working ship and antiquarians who preferred the reconstruction. (1980, p. 93)

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In such cases, Wiggins acknowledges the in uence of purposes and projects on identity judgments, but argues that these are simply cases about which we should be more relaxed, suggesting a somewhat arbitrary-sounding ‘50% of original matter’ criterion as a rough guide. In response to such claims, it should be noted Ž rst of all that the teleological webs under discussion are hardly ‘conventions’. They are meaning-giving structures that constitute our sense of what’s real, as opposed to conventions within a pre-given objective world. But perhaps we can rephrase the question: ‘teleological webs constitute equipment, but do they constitute theoretical entities?’ If artifacts are merely a special case, as Wiggins suggests, then a Heideggerian interpretation doesn’t have very far-reaching repercussions. Artifacts might be constituted by teleological webs but rocks certainly aren’t and, in such cases, we can stick with a metaphysics of the extant and not worry too much about constitutive teleologies. Being still falls back into being after all. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s as easy as that. We might Ž rst of all question the claim that intuitions of identity and persistence for artifacts are more fragile than in cases such as natural kinds. This simply does not seem to accord with the phenomenology of our everyday practices of individuation, where our intuitions concerning artifact identity seem just as reliable as our intuitions concerning the identity of anything else. We can add to this the observation that philosophers manage to get in just as big a mess dealing with every other kind of thing as they do with artifacts. For instance, consider the myriad scenarios that philosophers have concocted to sway our intuitions concerning personal identity. 18 If we assume the primacy of detached contemplation of an objective world over, say, involvement with equipment, it seems more palatable to concede ambiguity over ‘ships’ than over ‘elephants’. However, I think that, so far as the constitutive signiŽ cance of projects, goals, and functionality is concerned, artifacts are far from unique. Consider a rock on a mountain side. The rock is observed over some considerable time by a number of different parties who are all eventually asked whether it is still the same rock. A tour guide says that it is not, because a lightning strike knocked the rock from a conspicuous location which made it a famous landmark that functioned as a guide for tourists. Its signiŽ cance as Beth’s Rock is therefore no more. A geographer agrees with this interpretation. However, a physicist disagrees and explains that it is the same rock because it is the same ‘lump of stuff’ that has endured through space-time; it is constituted from the same matter and retains the same shape. But the resident chemist disagrees with the physicist and points out that it is not the same rock. The original rock was made from element x which has been subject to fast atomic decay. All of element x has broken down to element y and hence it is no longer a lump of x so how can it be the same rock? An artist chimes in to say that it is the same rock because it retains the same unique blend of surface textures, shadows, and exquisite patterns

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that have made it such a popular choice among painters over many years. Needless to say we could go on and Ž nd many more projects, values, and functions which serve to constitute our sense of the extant; a thing’s essential ‘whatness’, ‘whereness’, and ‘existence’. Again, teleological webs seem not only to constitute objects by selecting different sortals, relative to which x is individuated, but also to constitute the sortals themselves. To claim otherwise would be to commit oneself to a near inŽ nite variety of possible sortals from which our interests select, which amounts to much the same claim in any case. One might respond by saying that rocks aren’t natural kinds and that it is only in the case of natural kinds that entities are immune to such teleological disruptions, which is precisely why science privileges what Heidegger calls Vorhandenheit over Zuhandenheit . But the onus here is on science to demonstrate that there is an ontologically privileged class of theoretical entities. We should not simply assume that scientiŽ c ontologies are objectively privileged, and a cursory glance suggests that they’re just as dependent on teleological webs as anything else. Goals, projects, and networks of purposes play a constitutive role in science, just as they do in the case of artifacts. I suggest that background networks of projects, values, and teleologies do not merely constrain and focus scientiŽ c inquiry. 19 As with artifacts, they also serve to constitute the very sense of the entities under investigation. For example, Dupre´ (1993) argues that background goal structures and projects result in different modes of classiŽ cation, effectively constituting different sortals which serve to classify and, more important, individuate entities; ‘the vocabularies of the timber merchant, the furrier, or the herbalist may involve subtle distinctions among kinds of organisms; there is no obligation that these coincide with those of the taxonomist’ (p. 35). He contends that categories such as ‘species’ have no real essence and instead what may seem like essential properties stem from background beds of values and interests. 20 And Ratcliffe (2001) argues that all biological inquiry unavoidably presupposes a background teleological structure for its sense, a structure that constitutes the sense of the entities and kinds of entity under investigation. 21 (Consider, for example, how Richard Dawkins’s deluge of teleological language [1982, 1989] serves vividly to reorientate the reader’s conception of ‘organism’ and, with the example of the ‘extended phenotype’ [1982], set up a background of values and functions that effectively makes the very concept of an organism evaporate.) One might still retort that these are isolated examples or anomalies which are at odds with the privileged objectivity of most theoretical entities. However, I think that the burden of proof here lies Ž rmly with our scientiŽ c objectivist. Given the increasingly substantial body of recent work in the sociology of scientiŽ c knowledge (which stands upon the shoulders of Kuhn, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Duhem, amongst others), unargued assertions to the

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effect that there is a privileged objective realm, to which we can retreat in times of philosophical trouble, appear increasingly untenable. Indeed, some recent work in the sociology of knowledge has a lot in common with the position I’m arguing here. I am not thinking of the sort of naturalistic sociology of knowledge championed by Bloor (1991) in his statement of the ‘strong programme’, but of the more transcendentally/phenomenologically orientated approach. To cite an example of the latter, Collins (1992) advocates a programme which seeks to uncover the complex webs of tacit presuppositions that scientiŽ c practice takes for granted, an approach which requires something analogous to the phenomenological reduction in order to uncover tacit, meaning-constituting backgrounds: ‘Phenomenologists talk of “taken-for-granted-reality” – a phrase which captures the lack of any sense of accomplishment felt by humans as they order their world’ (1992, p. 15) and is as applicable to science as any other area of life. For the purposes of this article, I do not endorse the Ž ner details of Collins’s account. Collins leans heavily on the later Wittgenstein and any attempt to assess the full scope for comparison between Collins’s Wittgensteinian view and a Heideggerian perspective would require a lengthy detour at best. However, even without a strong positive comparison, recent work in the sociology of knowledge is sufŽ cient ammunition to lean on for the negative task of undermining the notion of privileged theoretical objectivities. Given the wealth of evidence indicating that science is as immersed in the teleologies of everyday life as anything else,22 it is safe to say that the burden of proof rests Ž rmly upon those who would wish to champion an ontologically privileged realm that is divorced from constitutive teleology. I suggest that in science, as elsewhere, different teleological webs structure our sense of the extant, literally transforming our conceptions of the possible kinds of interconnected categories and entities which together make up reality. To summarize my argument, metaphysical inquiries into beings are structured in such a way as to re ect something about the Being of those beings; that which is presupposed by the intelligibility of any conception of objective reality. Metaphysical puzzles and thought-experiments mess around with teleological webs which serve to constitute the realm of extant beings differently and thus transform our sense of the kinds of things that might conceivably exist. Teleological webs thus reveal something of what Heidegger calls Being. It is also interesting to note that the teleological webs incorporated into metaphysical discussions are not only compatible with the early Heidegger’s account but also provide a means of arguing for it. Metaphysical arguments provide a demonstration of how one might go about investigating something of the Being of beings; of how we might uncover Being. As with Heidegger’s account, this process leans heavily on some conception of interpretation. In

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telling different stories, which tacitly incorporate different teleologies, we reinterpret our sense of beings and thus reveal something that was previously hidden. By playing around with thought-experiments, we illustrate how our sense of the extant always presupposes teleological, constitutive backgrounds of interpretation. In interpreting and reinterpreting beings, we uncover the role that teleological webs play. By pulling apart our intuitions concerning certain beings, thought-experiments illustrate, not just the fragility of our sense of these beings, but also that which is presupposed by the intelligibility of beings – Being. So from the possibility of a metaphysics of beings and from the structure of metaphysical inquiries into beings, we can draw these key Heideggerian claims: (a) The question of Being is intelligible. (b) The structure of experience is such that the question is askable. (The interpretative processes involved in metaphysical thought-experiments provide a demonstration of how we can gain some positive insight into the nature of Being.) (c) Tacit teleological webs serve to constitute our sense of objective beings and thus reveal something of the nature of our understanding of Being. 23 The claim that there is always already an understanding of Being prior to beings may suggest to many metaphysicians an intolerable undermining of realism or even the impossibility of any realist metaphysics. In the concluding section, I argue that this is far from the case and that the acknowledgement of Being poses no necessary threat to such metaphysical projects. It merely opens up an additional and complementary realm of questions.

V. Realism and Being Acknowledging the intelligibility of Being need not undermine realist claims concerning beings. As noted in I, the fact that beings presuppose Being does not make them any less real. This is because Being has none of the characteristics of the real or extant. It is prior to the intelligibility of reality, prior to questions concerning what’s real or unreal, and hence should not be understood as something which stops us getting at reality or gets in the way between us and reality. It is a precondition for the sense of any realist inquiry and not something that obstructs it or dooms it to failure. A metaphysics of beings and a metaphysics of Being are therefore quite compatible in principle – one investigates reality and the other investigates the constitutive background that a sense of reality presupposes. One might object that, in arguing that our sense of the real must be unstable and changeable in order for Being to be uncovered, I have implied that the goal of Ž nding a rigid, unshakeable map that pins down all the features of

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reality cannot succeed. Being gives sense to our conception of the real but how unitary is that conception? If reality is constituted in different ways, relative to different backgrounds of projects and values, then no single, Ž xed sense of ‘what’s real’ will predominate. Hence any account which presupposes a unitary and Ž xed reality, whose constituents we can systematically chart, will fail. However, I don’t think this consequence is as unpalatable as it might at Ž rst appear. Most metaphysicians will happily acknowledge that many of our convictions about the nature of reality and its meaningful contents are indeed indeterminate or ambiguous. All I’ve done is to suggest why this might be the case – the extant is constituted differently by variations in constitutive teleological webs. Given this, projects such as conceptual analysis (under formulations like Jackson’s [1998]) can still proceed quite happily – we can test how  exible our concepts are, chart their boundaries, and pin down areas of ambiguity or collapse. Limited naturalistic endeavours, which tease out the philosophical implications of scientiŽ c theories of reality and work alongside science, dealing with puzzling scientiŽ c concepts and inconsistencies (e.g. Dennett [1987, 1995]) remain viable, although a totalizing scientiŽ c naturalism would have to be rejected.24 Descriptive projects (e.g. Strawson [1959]) remain tenable. There is also no reason to dismiss revisionary projects (e.g. Rovane [1998]) which enforce some stability on loose or ambiguous conceptual schemes (e.g. we could say that what we mean by ‘ship’ from now on is a maritime transport vessel which endures change of parts but must retain its form at all times). Perhaps most importantly, the study of Being is compatible with projects such as Lowe’s, which treat metaphysics as the study of how reality really is. As already discussed, Being is a precondition for the intelligibility of the real and cannot therefore diminish the strength of our claims about the nature of reality. Also, the fact that our sense of reality is unstable to an extent and may be subject to change should not in itself concern us. Even if our conceptions of what reality ultimately consists of are inevitably variable, it is still plausible that some of our ontological claims are sharper than others, more general than others, more basic than others, and less susceptible to disruption in shifts of constitutive context, thus allowing, some structure for metaphysicians to pick up on. For instance, it seems clear that our sense of ‘object’ is more robust than ‘ship’. Of course, the study of Being does not entail that reality actually is tidy enough for a metaphysics of beings to be able to come up with a universally palatable, stable ontology but – even though Heidegger himself leans in a relativistic direction – it does not deny it either. For Being to be revealed, there must be instabilities in our constituted reality which can be somehow revealed by an interpretative (or some other) process, but that does not entail that our sense of reality is irreparably shattered, just torn in places. To conclude, my central claim here has been that projects which aim to

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provide an account of beings also reveal something of the Being of those beings, through the ways in which they incorporate backgrounds of functions, purposes, projects, and value assumptions, in order to demonstrate ambiguities and lack of clarity in our map of reality, and guile us into different ontological commitments in different scenarios. In so doing, they not only reveal something of what the world is like but also something about what must be the case for it to be thinkable. In order to illustrate this, a sort of Copernican Turn is required, where we switch from attending to explicit metaphysical arguments to the question of what must be the case for those arguments to do the job that they do – what must they presuppose? In other words, all it takes is a change of emphasis or standpoint. Hence I suggest that the projects of a realist metaphysics and a study of non-extant Being are not only compatible but can inform each other and work off the back of each other. Any study of beings has, as its correlate, a study of the Being of those beings. Perhaps this conclusion goes some way towards bridging the more general – and I think, philosophically very worrying – gulf between analytic and continental traditions in contemporary philosophy, in that the difference between Heidegger and analytic metaphysics is one of emphasis as opposed to incommensurability. Heidegger would certainly have objected to all this. In his eyes, philosophy simply is the study of Being and nothing else is worthy of the name: ‘Being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy’ (BPP § 3, p. 11) and ‘philosophy is the theoretical conceptual interpretation of Being, of Being’s structure and its possibilities’ (BPP § 3, p. 11). So, for Heidegger, phenomenology is the only genuine metaphysics: ‘the transcendental science of being has nothing to do with popular metaphysics, which deals with some being behind the known beings’ (BPP § 4, p. 17). Despite the fact that Heidegger wouldn’t regard contemporary analytic metaphysics as philosophy, he doesn’t claim that such inquiries are impossible, just unworthy of the name ‘philosophy’ . So all this really amounts to is a deŽ nition of ‘philosophy’ and an unsupported assertion concerning the respective merits of two forms of inquiry. Given that so many philosophers are interested in beings, it seems safer to advocate a more inclusive sense of ‘philosophy’, one that incorporates the study of both Being and beings, as compatible strands of inquiry that can complement and feed off each other.25 NOTES 1 To distinguish between beings (das Seiende) and their Being (Sein), the latter is capitalized throughout the paper. I avoid using an alternative term, such as ‘entity’ (e.g. Macquarrie and Robinson’s [1962] translation of Heidegger’ s Sein und Zeit), as I fear that the term ‘entity’ may serve to mislead. It is commonly used to refer to a subcategory of beings that Heidegger terms ‘extant beings’ (Vorhandenheit ), whereas Heidegger’ s das Seiende has a much more general scope. The term ‘being’ (das Seiende) is not simply synonymous with

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3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13

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‘object’ or ‘entity’ and should be taken instead to encompass any element of a conceived reality that one might individuate, e.g., space-time curvatures, waves, events and forces. For Heidegger, Dasein is also a ‘being’ but it is certainly not an object or ‘entity’ in any familiar sense. I shall be referring primarily to two texts, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Hofstadter’s 1982 translation of Heidegger’ s Die Grundprobleme der Pha¨nomenologie ) and Being and Time (Macquarrie and Robinson’s 1962 translation of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit), abbreviated to BPP and BT respectively. Page numbers refer to the English translations. Heidegger’ s own conception of ‘world’ is far more complex than this. See, e.g., BPP § 15, pp. 162–5) As Polt (1999, p. 81) puts it, ‘Being can be described as what it means for entities [Seiende] to be – or as the background against which entities can show up as entities – or as the difference it makes that there are entities, rather than nothing’. This entails that all objective , scientiŽ c inquiry presupposes an understanding of Being: ‘all nonphilosophical sciences have as their theme some being or beings, and indeed in such a way that they are in every case antecedently given as beings to those sciences.’ (BPP§ 13, p. 130) ‘The basic structures of any such area [a science] have already been worked out after a fashion in our pre-scientiŽ c ways of experiencing and interpreting that domain of Being in which the area of subject-matter is itself conŽ ned.’ (BT § 3, p. 29) Heidegger adopts the term ‘Dasein’, in place of ‘subject’, in order to move away from a prejudicial and philosophically damaging ‘subjectivism’, which he thinks has misled recent philosophy and obfuscated any attempt to appreciate the nature of our understanding of Being. Dasein is not a subject that relates intentionally to objects in a pre-given objective world. Heidegger rejects any such objectiŽ ed conception of intentionality: ‘in this characterization of intentionality as an extant relation between two things extant, a psychical subject and a physical object, the nature as well as the mode of being of intentionality is completely missed’ (BPP § 9, p. 60). See Carr (1999) for a critique of Heidegger’ s interpretation of Kantian subjectivity. See also Heidegger (1990), Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics . E.g. Edmund Husserl, in texts such as Cartesian Meditations (1960), takes it as given that the most fundamental intentionalities to be explicated by phenomenology are of a theoretical nature. When I use the term ‘constitution’ , I am adopting it in a Husserlian sense. To constitute something is essentially to render it intelligible. X constitutes Y if X must be presupposed by the conceivability of Y. Heidegger rarely uses the term Konstitution (though see, e.g., BT § 28, p. 171). But despite his reluctance to embrace the term, I think it still captures the sense of relationships between beings and their Being, in so far as Being is that which is presuppositionally required for the intelligibility of beings. See Haugeland (1998) – essay 13 in particular – for a concise formulation of a conception of transcendental constitution . See, e.g., Okrent (1988) for a pragmatist interpretation of the early Heidegger. ‘Analytic metaphysics’ does not of course have sharply deŽ ned philosophical boundaries. In my use of the term, I simply mean the kind of inquiry that is outlined in this section. Lowe’s own conception of metaphysical inquiry is more sophisticated than this short overview might suggest. In brief, he argues that metaphysics is concerned with possibilities – with describing possible categories of being which might turn out to be actual. Science then selects from these possible categories the ones that actually apply to reality. However, from a Heideggerian perspective, projects such as this are still concerned wholly with beings. In describing different possible contents of reality and arguing that metaphysics cannot by itself chart what the real world actually contains, Lowe still presupposes the conceivability of the real. To conceive of possible states of the real, one must already be able to conceive of the real. In other words, one must presuppose an understanding of Being, if we conceive of Being as ‘that which must be the case for a real world to be thinkable’. For the purposes of this discussion, I assume, with most metaphysicians, that identity is absolute. Two things are either identical or they are not. It does not make sense to say that x is identical with y but in the event of y’s destruction or demise, x would be identical with z

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15 16 17

18

19 20

21

22 23 24

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Matthew Ratcliffe instead. The absoluteness of identity is an essential constituent of our sense of the extant. I will argue later that teleological webs constitute the extant and also that different teleological webs will constitute it differently. So, when our sense of ‘what’s real’ is reconstituted, different objects will be individuated and different identity claims will be made. However, within any given constitutive context, I maintain the assumption that identity is absolute, and that it does not make sense to cross from one constitutive context to another in order to claim that identity is relative. (See Geach [1972] and Wiggins [1980] for contrasting views on absolute and relative identity). Note that colour is merely an epistemic marker and itself carries no ontological weight. As Scaltsas makes clear, if the ships were just repainted, the people would not be so concerned. I ask that the reader ignore the obvious physical implausibility of this example! Such scenarios may also serve to shed light upon and support some of the later Heidegger’ s claims. I am thinking particularly of his construal of technology as a tacit, all-encompassing background in which we are irretrievably immersed, a background which determines the manner in which beings are rendered intelligible or revealed to us (see, e.g., ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ , in Heidegger’ s Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell [1993]). In such cases, it seems equally plausible that tacit backgrounds of functionality and projects play a role. For example, Williams (1973, Essay 4: ‘The Self and The Future’) tells a story in two different ways. In one case, you and I are described as swapping bodies and in the other as swapping memories. You are then asked ‘who would you rather was tortured?’ Any preference presupposes an answer to the question ‘which would be me?’ but intuitions as to which you should identify yourself with can swing one way or the other depending on how the story is presented, which teleological frameworks are quietly incorporated into the story, which perspective you are covertly invited to take. E.g. GarŽ nkel (1981), amongst others, argues that background purposes play an essential constraining role in the process of scientiŽ c explanation. As the next section will make clear, though Dupre´’s project is aimed at telling us how the world really is, I believe it to be fully compatible with a Heideggerian project which inquires as to the conditions for the thinkability of the real. Dupre´’s ‘ontological pluralism’ contends that the ontological commitments which our interactions with the world actually warrant are far less rigid than most philosophers suppose. He rejects totalizing reductionism and essentialism and instead proposes an account which is nonreductionist and liberal, in permitting myriad equally legitimate categorizations and classiŽ cations. This is perhaps what we would expect our ‘framework of the real’ to be like if our ‘sense of the real’ is constituted by functionality contextures which are forever in  ux. In connection with the study of constitutive frameworks in biology, see also Dennett’s (1987, 1995) account of the ‘intentional stance’ as a precondition for the possibility of all biological inquiry, and Haugeland’ s (1998) arguments to the effect that Dennett’s stances are constitutive commitments which can be understood from an ultimately Kantian / Heideggerian standpoint. Collins (1992) discusses much of the recent literature. The question of what must be the case for Care to be possible takes us to the next stage in the early Heidegger’ s project and the study of Original Temporality, which I shall not pursue here. As such a naturalism presupposes an objective world in whose terms all phenomena are to be accounted for, the study of Being is beyond its grasp. Being is a precondition for the intelligibility of naturalistic accounts – that which constitutes the real cannot be fully grasped within a framework which presupposes the intelligibility of the real. I am grateful to John Dupre´ , Martin Kusch, Jonathan Lowe, Tony O’Connor, Norman Sieroka, a number of anonymous referees and audiences at the University of Durham and the National University of Singapore for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

R E FE R E NC E S Bloor, D. 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Carr, D. 1999. The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in The Transcendental Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, H. M. 1992. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in ScientiŽ c Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dawkins, R. 1982. The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press Dawkins, R. 1989. The SelŽ sh Gene (rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dennett, D. C. 1987. The Intentional Stance . Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press. Dennett, D. C. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Allen Lane: Penguin Press. Dreyfus, H. J. 1991. Being-In-The-World . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dupre´, J. 1995. The Disorder of Things. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. GarŽ nkel, A. 1981. Forms of Explanation . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Geach, P. T. 1972. Logic Matters. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Haugeland, J. 1998. Having Thought: Essays in The Metaphysics of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. 1982. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology . Trans. and intro. A. Hofstadter. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. 1990. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics . Trans. R. Taft. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. 1993. Basic Writings. Ed. D. F. Krell. London: Routledge. Husserl, E. 1960. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology . Trans. D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology . Trans. D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Jackson, F. 1998. From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kornblith, H. (ed.) 1985. Naturalizing Epistemology. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press. Lowe, E. J. 1983. ‘On the Identity of Artifacts.’ Journal of Philosophy 80, 220–2. Lowe, E. J. 1998. The Possibility of Metaphysics . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Okrent, M. 1988. Heidegger’ s Pragmatism: Understanding, Being and the Critique of Metaphysics . Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press. Polt, R. 1999. Heidegger: An Introduction . London: UCL Press. Ratcliffe, M. 2001. ‘A Kantian Stance on the Intentional Stance.’ Biology and Philosophy 16, 29–52. Rovane, C. 1998. The Bounds of Agency: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scaltsas, T. 1980. ‘The Ship of Theseus’. Analysis 40, 152–7. Smart, B. 1972. ‘How to Reidentify the Ship of Theseus.’Analysis 32, 145–8. Strawson, P. 1959. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics . London: Routledge. Wiggins, D. 1980. Sameness and Substance . Oxford: Blackwell. Received 5 June 2001 Matthew Ratcliffe, Department of Philosophy, University College Cork, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected]