Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

    1.0   Is an object anything that I can count as one?

    The notion of Oneness is prevalent in every culture and religion and comes to us from ancient times. The
    Buddhists talk about being one with the Universe. [1]  Christians, Muslims, and Jews officially subscribe to
    monotheism (while simultaneously proposing demi-gods such as angels, devils, and spirits). Even
    contemporary philosophers and scientists exalt the unity of nature. [2]  So it was natural and not altogether
    surprising in retrospect that the philosophers would one day debate and propose the most obvious
    property of an object: that it is a unit:

    “ The principles in question must be either (a) one or (b) more than one. If (a) one, it must
       be either (i) motionless, as Parmenides and Melissus assert, or (ii) in motion, as the
       physicists hold, some declaring air to be the first principle, others water.” (Bk. I, Part 2)  [3]

    “ The monad…is nothing but a simple substance…By ‘simple’ is meant ‘without parts’.
       Now where there are no parts, there can be neither extension nor form [figure] nor
       divisibility. These Monads are the real atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements
       of things.”   [4]

    “ Whatever may be an object of thought, or may occur in any true or false proposition,
       or can be counted as one, I call a term…I shall use as synonymous with it the words
       unit, individual and entity. The first two emphasize the fact that every term is one,
       while the third is derived from the fact that every term has being, i.e. is in some sense..”  [5]

    “ fundamental particle: A particle with no internal substructure. All other objects are
       made from these particles.”  [6]

    “ Natural objects are, philosophically speaking, individuals; they are involved as units
       in dynamic, causal processes.”  [7]

    These folks are known in philosophical circles as endurantists and include famous Greeks like Parmenides
    and Zeno.

    However, just as someone thought of an object as an indivisible unit, someone else came up with the bright
    idea that all objects are divisible and countable. Thus, the notion developed that an object is that which we
    can divide.

    “ objects which could not possibly have any parts other than their actual ones…
       simply do not exist.”   [8]

    “ In physics, a bound state is a composite of two or more building blocks (particles
       or bodies) that behaves as a single object.”   [9]

    The insinuation of the ‘countable’ philosopher is that an object is the sum of its parts.

    Of course, the divisible/countable version led to different sects. Some idiots known as mereologists decided
    to cut the pie spatially, (i.e., lengthwise) while others idiots (known as a perdurantists ) prefer to divide the
    cake in minutes (time-wise). I discuss why the arguments of these morons fail later, after I define the word
    object.


    2.0   Do mass nouns qualify as objects

    Leibniz suggested that the ultimate and indivisible objects that comprised all of nature were monads: in a
    nutshell, the concept of unity.  

    “ Now where there are no parts, there can be neither extension nor form [figure] nor
       divisibility. These Monads are the real atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements
       of things.” [10]

    In his view, the word table refers to a single object. Frege, Russell, and others countered with pluralism and
    mass nouns. There are plural terms such as tables that refer to objects treated as a set. Aren’t tables objects
    as well? Can’t we use this term as the subject of a sentence? Nevertheless, if the interpretation in the case
    of plurals is debatable, surely it is not with the word gold. Words such as gold, blood, matter, water, and air
    are known as mass nouns. They refer to material things that may serve as the subject of the sentence, yet
    they seem to invoke many objects. Therefore, if gold refers to a physical entity and is an object, what then is
    the shape of gold?’

    What these examples and debates really show is that quantity is not a good criterion to define what an
    object is. A house consists of four walls and a roof. A roof consists of 1000 shingles. Each shingle consists
    of countless molecules and atoms. Each atom consists of protons, neutrons and electrons. Where do we
    stop? Isn’t each and every word in this runaway list an object? Whenever the prosecutor points at Exhibit A
    and says table, there is no inkling regarding its constitution. For the moment, the object in question is only
    part of a hypothesis, the initial scene of a story. Whether the table is actually made of a single piece or of
    parts is an issue of theory and proof.

    Regarding the so-called ‘mass nouns’ we have to put them in their proper context. If we point to Exhibit A
    and say gold, the ET identifies the word with the lump of metal in front of us for the remainder of the
    presentation. However, the ET will regard as gold any similarly shaped chunk of metal until we specify in
    more detail what the word gold actually stands for. If we want the ET to understand the concept gold, we
    have no choice but to compare the lump we call gold against lumps of other metals or elements.
           
Russell says that
an object is that
which is one

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    Last modified 01/12/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008

Fig. 1   Mass Nouns
Your soul is a
physical object
because you
have only one.
Space is a physical
object because
there is only one.
Your legs are not
physical objects
because you have
two of them.
Ants are not
physical objects
because there are
too many of them.
Is gold not
physical
because you
can't count it?
The Philosophers