## 1. Introduction


### 1.1 'Thing Theory'



The relatively orthodox reactions to 'stuff' (or
'matter') as opposed to 'things' in
contemporary analytic metaphysics is to either ignore stuff, reduce
stuff to things, or eliminate stuff from one's ontology. These
reactions are required by the previous embrace of what we could call
'Thing Theory.' Thing Theory, very roughly, is the view
that (excluding properties and
 relations)[1],
 all concrete existents are either things fundamentally, or reducible
to fundamental things.



Peter Strawson, in his influential *Individuals* claims
"Anything whatever can be introduced into discussion by means of
a singular, definitely identifying substantival expression ...
anything whatever can be identifyingly referred to ... Anything
whatever can appear as a logical subject, an
 "individual.'"[2]



In Quine's influential *Word and Object* he speaks about
"limning the true and ultimate structure of reality,"
(1960, 221) and according to him, for an object to exist is for it to
be necessarily quantified over in an idealized and regimented logical
language used to truly and comprehensively describe the world. And he
claims that the values of the variables of such a theory will only
range over sets and physical objects, so "as far as he is
concerned ... only physical objects and sets really exist,"
and, it must be noted, both objects and sets, even if the latter are
abstract, are all regarded as 'things' or
 'objects'[3]



And, from a recent abstract of a book chapter, we have the terse
"the world is a world of objects" (Heil 2003, Ch. 15).
This family of views goes back to Aristotle's *Metaphysics
Zeta* and the *Categories*. (See the section on
 substance, matter, and subject in the entry on Aristotle's metaphysics
 for details.)



But if the world is a world of things, what are they in general? What
things, individuals, or objects are is itself a controversial and
murky matter, and goes beyond the purview of this article (for more,
see these related entries:
 object,
 ordinary objects,
 sortals,
 substance). Related terms in philosophy for 'thing' are
 *substance*,[4]
*primary substance*, *particular*, *concrete
particular*, *existent*, *being*, *entity*,
*substratum*, *term*, and so on. For the purposes of
this entry, we will take a rather minimalistic view of thinghood. We
will regard a thing or object as whatever satisfies this
definition:



> 
> (*Thinghood*) *x* is a *thing* or *object*
> if and only if:
> 
> 1. *x* falls under some *F*, and *F* is
> singular. [Furthermore, the plural "the *F*s" is
> well-formed and does not refer to kinds (e.g., in 'the wines of
> France').]
> 2. *x* can be unqualifiedly counted as *one*. [i.e.,
> *x* can take 'one' as an unqualified numerical
> determiner, without recourse to measurement, 'packaging',
> or partitive phrases (e.g., 'one dog', versus 'one
> gallon of water' or 'one water molecule').] (See
> Laycock 2006, chapter 2)
> 3. *x* is concrete (i.e., *x* is not a universal,
> property, relation, or abstract entity).
> 
> 
> 



And now, using the notion of Thinghood, a minimalist Thing Theory can
be captured as follows:



(TT)
Whatever exists is a thing, or is reducible to a thing or
things.


Thing theorists hold that whatever exists is unqualifiedly countable
as one, or reducible to such things. For the Thing Theorist "to
be is to be countable." Some Stuff Ontologists would
counter--"to be is to be either countable or
measurable" (a gloss on Burge 1975, p. 459).



All three Thing-Theoretic views in section
 2
 maintain that, fundamentally, it all boils down to things.
'Matter' always refers to parcels (or 'sums')
of matter, and parcels are always particular things, which can even be
counted in principle. (If there are *n* simple and discrete
fundamental things across all of space-time, then there are at most
(2*n* [?] 1) things total in the cosmos).
Masses-as-sets can always be held to be sets of things, and plural
reference can always be held to be reference to a number of
things.



We can view 'Stuff Ontologies' as views which, in some
sense, depart from this picture and 'take stuff
seriously.' That is, a Stuff Ontology is any view which departs
from Thing Theory in important respects so as to allow non-thing-like
stuff to be part of the fundamental furniture of the world, whereas
Thing Theorists believe that stuff-talk modeled on mass term use has
no proper place in the fundamental correct description of the
world.



Stuff Ontologists can either (i) eliminate things, (ii) accept that
there are things, but hold that they are merely derivative entities
which are parasitic on the fundamental stuff of the world, or (iii)
hold that *both* stuff and things are fundamental, and are
 inter-irreducible.[5]


### 1.2 Stuff, Things, Fundamentality and Reduction



These debates are motivated by not just the linguistic data covered
below, but by conflicting intuitions about the relation between
objects and their constituting matter. (See the entry on
 material constitution
 for more details.) Many make a strong case for an ontological
distinction between stuff (or matter) and things. Here are some
typical reasons given to believe in the distinction:


1. Some stuff often has a different history than an object which it
constitutes. Invariably, the water that makes up a snowball pre-dates
the snowball.
2. The persistence of an object (e.g., a desk) is sensitive to the
contiguity of its parts. Some stuff (e.g., the wood), however, can
survive many instances of spatial scatter.
3. Stuffs are cumulative, objects are not (Burge 1977,
p. 104). For instance, any two portions of water, considered
together, make up a portion of water that contains the first two
portions as parts. But objects are not like this, e.g., two cars or
cats do not make up a car or cat.
4. Stuffs are dissective, objects are not (Burge 1977, p. 106)
Divide up a (macroscopic) portion of water in half and you will be
left with water. Divide a flower in half, and you won't be left
with
 flowers.[6]
5. Extended simple objects with no parts are possible. While there
are no objects or things making up such objects, there is nevertheless
stuff composing it. The parts do not pre-date the division of an
extended simple, whereas the stuff does (Markosian 1998a; Scala
2002).



But, if stuff and things are distinct, they must be intimately
related. It is tempting to philosophers to try to reduce or eliminate
one of the categories and hold that only one category is
*fundamental* (or 'ontologically basic,' i.e., it
must be mentioned in any true, comprehensive, and non-redundant
description of the world).



Reflection can lead us to believe that a familiar object, such as a
tree, is nothing more than some stuff in a certain arrangement. This
stuff could have been in a different arrangement, possibly
constituting two smaller trees, or perhaps nothing at all. This raises
the possibility that stuff is more fundamental than things.



But, when we look closely at stuff, or listen to scientists, we see
that it is likely particulate, and, if particles are objects, then it
appears that stuff is actually not fundamental after all--objects
are. *Prima facie* these positions cannot both be true, and our
conflicting intuitions call for an explanation as to the relation
between stuff and things.



What are we talking about when we talk about stuff? We will first look
at the three main answers given in
 section 2.
 The first answer, by far the most popular (and consequently receiving
the most attention), is that stuff-talk is talk about masses of
particles or molecules. The second is that stuff-talk is talk about
sets, and, lastly, that it is talk about many things (or
'pluralities'). The views in
 section 2,
 in one way or another, hold that stuff is very thing-like or
reducible to things.



In
 section 3
 we will examine more radical views which say that the moral to draw
from reflection upon concrete mass expressions, among other things, is
that the world consists of stuff, *not* things; or stuff in
addition to things, where the former is not thing-like.


### 1.3 Mass and Count Nouns; Mass and Count Expressions



The most common entry-point for thinking that there *may* be a
metaphysical difference between stuff and things is by noting that
while common things, such as dogs and rocks, can be unqualifiedly
counted, there are also stuffs, such as water and air, which cannot be
unqualifiedly counted. But the entry point can be even more
rudimentary, possibly pre-linguistic. As Burge (1975, 199) notes,
"from early childhood we learn to distinguish compact, enduring
things from the stuffs of which they are consituted. We count the
former and measure the latter. We treat things as stable points of
reference ... stuffs we think of as amorphous and protean."
Philosophers and linguists have often latched onto this distinction by
noting the difference between what are called 'mass
terms/nouns' and 'count terms/nouns.' Burge goes on,
"Mass terms are typically used to measure the masses--count
nouns, to number the multitudes" (1975, 199).



But what distinguishes mass from count nouns? In order to answer this,
it will be helpful if some preliminary conventions and issues are
explained or noted, even if only to sidestep them in order to make the
focus of this entry clear.



While this entry is about mass and count *expressions*, the
literature has typically focused instead on what are called mass and
count *nouns*. Mass nouns include *nitrogen*,
*porridge*, *trash*, *china*, *traffic*,
*data*, *shade*, *music, pain*, and
*furniture*. Count nouns include *horse*,
*futon*, *army*, *codicil*, *proposition*,
and *galaxy*. It should be noted from the outset that the
relation between the mass/count distinction and the stuff/thing
distinction across all metaphysical categories is not straightforward,
as there are so many different kinds of entities (e.g., events,
concreta, sets, processes, absences, conventional entities, etc.)
referred to by both mass and count expressions.



There is debate about whether *nouns* as such are count or
mass, as opposed to
 *expressions*.[7]
*Mass expression* is a broader class than *mass noun*,
since the former includes instances of the latter, as well as phrases
such as 'the water in the tub', 'the gold in
France,' and 'the grape juice Roderick drank.' In
comparison, 'Robert's car', 'John's
student,' and 'a NATO signatory' are count
expressions. But, while there is debate about whether nouns are count
or mass, no one denies that expressions can be count or mass (a single
word representing the limiting case). This is one reason our emphasis
is on 'expressions.'



There is a further preliminary issue, orthogonal to our discussion,
about whether expression*-types* or
expression-*instances* are what are primarily mass or count.
Many hold that mass expressions are ambiguous between mass or count
*senses* depending upon context (e.g., 'Mary had a little
lamb' could mean she owned one, or ate some (Quine 1960,
p. 91)). This question, and the former, can be side-stepped by
stipulating, in what follows, that the phrases 'mass
nouns,' 'mass terms,' and 'mass
expressions' will mean "noun/term/expression occurrences
employed with a mass
 sense."[8]



Following common usage (*cf* Pelletier & Schubert 1989), we
will occasionally label linguistic items with mass features by
'+MASS', and those without by
'-MASS', and those with count features by
'+COUNT' and without by
'-COUNT.' As will become clear, an
expression's being mass or count are not always mutually
exclusive, and neither is the distinction exhaustive. There are indeed
cases of +MASS/+COUNT (e.g.
'hair', 'fish'), or
-MASS/-COUNT (e.g.
'fireworks')). This ends the preliminaries.



The following are commonly employed syntactic and lexical distinctions
between mass and count nouns. Mass and count nouns act differently in
relation to quantifiers and non-logical determiners. Count nouns, but
not mass nouns (when not used in the kind sense), can be prefaced by
'each', 'every', 'few',
'fewer', 'many', and 'a'. Mass
nouns, but not count nouns, can be prefaced by 'much',
'little', 'a lot of', 'less',
'more', 'a quantity of', and so on. Both mass
and count nouns take 'most', 'all',
'some', 'no', 'none of the',
'any', 'hardly any', and 'a
little'.



Only count nouns can be prefaced unqualifiedly by numerals or the
indefinite article, and be pluralized without a category shift. When
we switch from speaking of 'a horse' to 'five
horses' we have not switched from speaking of things to speaking
of kinds of things. However, when we switch from speaking of
'wine' to 'a wine' or 'seven
wines', we usually switch from speaking about wine
(+MASS/-COUNT) to either portions of it
(-MASS/+COUNT), or to *kinds* of
wine (-MASS/+COUNT) (Pelletier 1974).
(Compare 'The wine is over there' to 'Gallo sells
seven wines.') While we do say things like "We'll
have six beers," or "I need five milks for the
children," these are understood, depending on context, as
shorthand for 'six bottles/kegs of beer,' or 'six
cartons/pints of milk' (Higginbotham 1995, Pelletier 1979 pp.
2-4, 2012). If you pour some wine on the floor you cannot, if
grammar is your guide, count the number of 'wines'
(+MASS/-COUNT) (in the non-kind sense)
on the floor. There are no things (or at least no commonsense things,
by which we individuate and track persistence) which are wines, such
that there are a number of them on the floor. Even if there were, say,
seven pools (or droplets, puddles, etc.) on the floor, we think the
same wine remains on the floor even if the pools cease to be, e.g. if
they are merged or further divided.



While mass nouns do not admit the indefinite article, they admit a use
of 'some' which acts like an indefinite article
(Cartwright 1965). We can say, for example, "Adam drank some
water which is worse than Onondaga Lake water," or,
"Heraclitus bathed in some water yesterday and bathed in it
again today." (Note the anaphoric use of 'it' in the
last sentence, and how it does not necessarily imply its referent is a
particular thing).



Both count and mass nouns admit the definite article. There are
sentence forms with a mass noun prefaced by the definite article, such
as "Socrates drank the hemlock in that cup," "Bob
just wrote your name in the snow over there." These sentences,
if true, will be cases of definite reference of mass expressions, in
that they pick out an actual concrete referent. Both mass and count
nouns admit definite reference. But, it is controversial whether
definite reference to stuff is *singular* reference.



For our purposes, it is useful to lay down a limited taxonomy of mass
nouns, not based on their linguistic, logical, or semantic features,
but based upon *prima facie* salient metaphysical
 criteria.[9]
 Compare the following lists:


1. *Concrete Quasi-Mass Nouns*: furniture, silverware, china,
trash, clothes
2. *Concrete Mass Nouns*: water, iron, lead, porridge,
flesh
3. *Abstract Mass Nouns*: information, data, wisdom
4. *Psychological Mass Nouns*: pain, admiration
5. *Quantitative Mass Nouns*: speed, weight, work, mass



(a) are definitely mass by the grammatical criteria discussed above,
and they refer to concrete entities. But, it is hard to see what
import they would have for supporting a metaphysics of
 stuff.[10]
 These words are devices for speaking about distinct, discrete objects
in a collective manner. In certain contexts, we seek to draw attention
to a bunch of distinct individuals, not as such, but, for pragmatic
reasons, as an undifferentiated mass or plurality of a certain
kind.



Few have been led by the use of the words *furniture* or
*silverware* to conclude that there is a category of stuff or
matter which is distinct from things, nor have many others denied that
there is such a strong distinction based on the interchangeability of
phrases like 'get your stuff off my desk!' with 'get
your things off my desk!' But, as we will discuss, the apparent
metaphysical triviality of category (a) could very well undermine the
contention that concrete mass nouns do in fact have metaphysical
import, since there is little or no grammatical difference between
terms in category (a) or
 (b).[11]
 This is discussed more in
 Section 4
 and in
 Supplement: Non-Atomicity and its Relevance to the Mass/Count Distinction.



'Concrete Mass Nouns' refer to the kinds of entities
discussed most often in the linguistically-informed metaphysics
literature. They have also been called 'physical stuff-kind
terms' (Zimmerman 1995).



Abstract mass nouns, if they do refer, do not, *prima facie*,
refer to physical stuffs or hunks of stuff. And the possibility of
propositional or 'abstract stuff' strikes many, if it
strikes them at all, as dubious--but it is not clear what is
problematic about it. (Some work on abstract mass nouns can be found
in Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014; Husic 2020; Hinterwimmer 2020;
Moltmann 2013, esp. 1.6; Nicolas 2002, 2003, and 2010; and Zamparelli
2020. See Treanor 2013, esp. p10, for an applied discussion which
relates, and see Koslicki 1999, 68-9 for a rejection of the
parallel between some abstract mass nouns and concrete mass nouns).
More on abstract mass nouns can be found in
 this section
 of the entry on the Logic of Mass Expressions.



Addressing issues surrounding abstract, psychological, and
quantitative mass nouns and their referents is beyond the scope of
this
 article.[12]
 Due to the almost exclusive emphasis on concrete and quasi-concrete
mass nouns in the metaphysics literature, this article will follow
suit. While an analysis of concrete and quasi-concrete mass
expressions could *possibly* be carried over to generate a
general metaphysical theory of masses, the prospects for this are dim.
This is because, even given the grammatical similarities between all
mass expressions, there are far too many differences between concrete
stuff and the entities in categories
 (c)-(e).[13]



In what follows, both concrete and quasi-concrete mass expressions
will be referred to as 'concrete mass expressions,' except
when the distinction is needed. Also, due to our focus, 'mass
expressions' henceforth refers only to concrete mass
expressions, except where indicated.


### 1.4 Some Terminology



Mereologies are formal systems, but we will be ignoring technicalities
in this entry as far as possible (for details, see the entry
 Mereology).
 Still, some terminology is necessary and useful, since we will be
discussing theories which employ mereological notions. Let us take the
notion of *part* as primitive. A 'simple' is a
non-composite entity, i.e., something with no
 parts.[14]



A *composite* thing has more than one part. The verb
*fuse* refers to an asymmetric relation between a whole and its
parts. If two things fuse they 'join together' to make up
a whole. For example, if the water in my glass and the water in your
glass fuse, then there exists a thing, a *fusion*, which is
made up of the two portions (sometimes it is said that the two
portions 'have a fusion'). No literal contact or fusion
(e.g., welding two rods together) is implied by this usage. If a fleet
is a single thing, then it is arguably a fusion of the boats making it
up. The nouns *whole* and *sum* are synonymous with
*fusion* and *composite*. *Overlap* occurs when
distinct things share one or more parts.



It is also necessary to make the following distinctions, which are not
standard to the literature, but are useful for our purposes. Any
concrete +MASS or +COUNT kind noun
*K* (e.g., 'gold', 'lobster,') will
fall into one or more of the following categories:


* *K* is an *atomic* kind iff if something is some
*K*, then it is a *K*-atom, or it is identical with a
fusion of *K*-atoms. And, something is a *K*-atom iff it
has no parts which are *K*.
* *K* is a *non-atomic* kind iff any *K* has
(proper) parts which are *K*.
* *K* is a *fuzzy atomless* kind iff any *K*
has parts of which it is indeterminate whether they are *K*
(i.e., there is no fact of the matter as to what counts as a smallest
unit of *K*).
* *K* is a *heterogeneous* kind iff any *K* has
some parts which are
*K*1...*K**n*, where
'*K*',
'*K*1'...*K**n*'
all refer to distinct kinds.



Electrons are atomic, since they have no parts which are electrons.
Also, if ships have no parts which are ships, then 'ship'
is an atomic kind term as well (Zimmerman 1995, p. 75; Sider
2001). Portions of non-atomic *gunk* or infinitely divisible
matter of a kind *K* are *K* through-and-through, as
would an infinitely descending chain of 'box-particles',
each of which contains a box-particle (Gardner 1983, p. 26).
Fruit cake is arguably a fuzzy atomless substance, since it can have
parts (e.g., half a blueberry with some gluten attached) that are not
determinately fruit cake. (cf. Landman 2011 on 'mess mass
nouns'). Some mass terms, e.g., 'cutlery' and
'gold' are heterogeneous. While a fork is some cutlery, a
tine is not, and, presumably, an electron in a gold atom is not gold.
Not all the categories are mutually exclusive, and the list is not
intended to be exhaustive for all kind-terms.


## 2. Stuff as a Special Kind of Thing or Things



A natural thought to have about sentences with referring nominal
concrete mass expressions (e.g., "Alvin drank *the water*
that Roderick poured" or "*The coffee in that cup*
is too hot") is that the expressions refer to portions of
matter, which are themselves made up of smaller bits of matter. It
*seems* obvious that thinking this is what taking such
sentences at face value amounts to. Not obvious, though, is what
metaphysical commitments this requires, and what metaphysical problems
might come along with this thought.



A general consensus has been reached that it is helpful to think
through these issues about *matter* within the framework of
mereology, or the logic of parts and wholes, even though there is much
disagreement about what the correct mereology is.


### 2.1 Concrete Mass Expressions Refer to Mereological Sums



In the various sum-theoretical analyses of mass expressions
(Cartwright 1965, 1979b; Burge 1977; Moravcsik 1973), all mass
expressions with their non-count features disappear upon analysis and
are replaced by talk of sums.



These accounts can get quite technical, but the basic idea is
relatively easy to understand. Since, on these accounts, concrete mass
expressions refer to mereological sums, a sentence such as "Snow
is white" is understood to mean that there is a sum of all the
snow (flakes, bits, balls, etc.), and that this sum is part of the
fusion of all the white things (Quine 1960, ch. 20). A sentence such
as "The water is in the tub" gets cashed out to mean that
there is a fusion of water molecules which is in the tub. While there
are many permutations on this strategy, sum theorists will, whenever
possible, paraphrase away talk of stuffs and talk instead of sums,
where sums satisfy the constraints of *Thinghood* and do not
contradict Thing Theory (TT) as outlined in
 1.1.



There are many possible positions for those who wish to analyze mass
expressions in terms of sums. What follows is a short survey of some
of the most salient decision points one must confront in constructing
a detailed view of this kind, and what problems emerge from deciding
one way or another.


#### 2.1.1 Which Sums of Stuff Are There?



In the literature on material objects, an oft-discussed question is:
when do two or more things compose a further thing (van Inwagen 1990)?
Some common answers are--*never* (Compositional
Nihilism--Unger 1979, Dorr and Rosen 2002); *always*
(Mereological Universalism--Lewis 1986, pp. 212-213;
Rea 1998); only when they *form a life* (Organicism--van
Inwagen 1990; Merricks 2001); whenever the candidate fusion has
*non-redundant causal powers* (Merricks 2001); whenever (and
only whenever) we *intuitively* think they do
(Intuitivism--Commonsense); or that composition is a *brute
fact* (Brutalism--Markosian 1998b). And the answers have
 proliferated.[15]



The most commonly held view is Mereological Universalism, or
'Unrestricted Mereology' ('UM' for short). Two
or more things always have a fusion. For example, the Empire State
Building and the Dalai Lama compose an object.



The debates about composition largely focus on the fusion of
objects--but what of matter? A strong case can be made for what
we could call the Unrestricted Fusion of Matter principle:



(UFM):
If there is some matter and some distinct matter, then there is a
sum of all of it. (cf. Markosian 2004, p. 410)


There are several ways to argue for this. Here's one:


1. For any two masses of stuff *K*, they compose a further
mass of *K*. (*Summativity*)
2. Matter is the most general material stuff kind.
(*Generality*)
3. So, any two or more masses of matter whatsoever compose a mass of
matter. (cf. Zimmerman 1995, section 5, Tanksley 2010)



*Summativity* is a plausible principle. We believe that we
refer when we say things like 'the water in your bottle'.
Now, if you keep half of the water in your bottle, and pour half in
Larry's empty bottle, and Larry drives off with his bottle, does
the water still exist? Supposing that none of the water is destroyed,
the answer seems to be clearly
 'yes'.[16]



Now, if this is so, and some water can exist while being spread out,
why suppose that that very same water came into existence only when
poured into your cup (from, say, two bottles)? It seems like it could
come into existence when joined only if it went out of existence when
scattered. But it didn't go out of existence when
scattered--so it couldn't have come into existence when
joined. So, there always was this water fusion (at least as long as
all the sub-portions of water existed). We can repeat the same
argument for the copper in two distinct statues. There will also be
the sum of the gold in Sweden and the lead in Tanzania, if we can
replace the *K* in Summativity with 'metal'.



And it also seems true that *matter* is a genuine kind term,
and the most general one there is for concrete stuffs. If it
wasn't, it is hard to see how scientists could speak, as they
do, about universal properties of matter, or what kinds of matter
there are, or how philosophers could contrast matter with allegedly
non-physical minds, abstract objects, and so forth.



So, it seems that any two portions of matter whatsoever have a fusion.
Accepting this result leads to acceptance of '*Mere
Sums*,' i.e.,


* 'Mere Sum': A composite object whose only existence
condition is the existence of its (fundamental) parts, and only
persistence condition is the persistence of all of the same ultimate
parts. A mere sum's parts need not be cohesive, spatially close,
or exhibit any kind of functional unity, and the sum need not be
solid, macroscopic, or fall under any commonsense or scientific kind
term. Even if it does have these features, they are inessential to its
 existence.[17]



It has proven extremely tempting to identify matter with Mere Sums
(and their ultimate parts) in the mereologist's sense, which
unrestricted mereology holds of, for the reasons just
 outlined.[18]



Of course, if sums are object-like, and one has reason to believe that
the only objects are ones with structured essences, then one would
have reason to reject Summativity and UFM which lead to the posit of
unstructured Mere Sums. (Generality seems harder to reject). Arguments
against these principles can be found in sections
 2.3
 and
 3.1.
 (See also Laycock 1972, pp. 4-5; 2006a, Appendix
III).


#### 2.1.2 Can Sums Change Their Parts?



Another crucial decision point in developing a sum theory of the
referents of mass expressions is deciding whether the elements in the
sum (e.g., the H2O molecules in some water, the gold atoms
in some gold) are essential to the sum. The case of the most general
kind, *masses of matter*, is a particularly important instance
of this question.



It seems intuitively obvious that when one takes a sip of water, or
adds a bit of water to a glass of water, that one does not have in the
glass precisely the same water both before and after. Even if the same
*amount* of water from a different batch replaces the water
which was taken away, we still would not have the same exact water
before us after the replacement. And, if we perform electrolysis on a
batch of water but preserve any matter from being lost we can rightly
say we have all the same matter as we did before, just not the same
water, since there is none. We can construct similar examples for any
type of matter. What can explain and unify these obvious intuitions is
that there is a most general category of entity--*masses of
matter*, where *all* the fundamental parts of *any*
mass are essential to it. Such masses of matter cannot change parts
whatsoever.



The existence of entities like this could easily explain why there is
not precisely the same water through these changes. An unqualified
view of this kind would be that *nothing whatsoever* can change
parts--this is called 'Mereological Essentialism.'
More restricted views hold that at the very least masses of matter
cannot change parts. Mereological essentialism has been an extremely
popular approach throughout history. (Abelard, Reid, Bishop Butler,
Locke, Hume, and Leibniz were all mereological essentialists of some
kind.)



There is much to say in favor of the following principle of
Mereological Essentialism for Masses (of matter) in general (for early
discussion of Mereological Essentialism under that name, see Chisholm
1973, 1975; Plantinga 1975):



(MEM)
For any mass of matter *M* and any mass of matter
*x*, if *x* is ever a part of *M*, *M*
will exist only when *x* exists and is a part of
*M*.


We can argue for a principle like this by first stating that masses of
matter at a time are individuated by having the same parts, and then
arguing that no mass can change parts over time.



Our more restricted 'Mereological Essentialism for Masses'
(MEM) seems *prima facie* consistent with allowing ordinary
objects to change parts. MEM seems less controversial than
'Mereological Essentialism for Objects' (MEO). MEM seems
like something of a truism, and perhaps part of the nature of the
category of matter. But let us turn to an argument for MEM on the
assumption that there are Mere Sums.



*At a time*, it is easy to distinguish and identify masses,
which in this context are considered Mere Sums. Assume a toy model of
a world with only 20 simples, each given a unique number from
1-20 as a name. By UFM, 1-4 will fuse at \(t\_1.\) Let us
call that sum 'Quadri.' Quadri will be distinct from any
sums with distinct parts, since no sum can have different parts from
itself at a time. Will Quadri be identical with anything
'else' composed of the same fundamental parts? Suppose 1
is an electron, and 2-4 are quarks. Suppose 1-4 compose a
hydrogen atom at \(t\_1.\) Call the atom 'Hydro'. By the
definition of Mere Sums, Quadri's parts' proximity to each
other is irrelevant to its persisting, but not so for Hydro, which, if
it loses its electron, will cease to exist as hydrogen. (The lone
proton is a cation of the hydron variety). So Hydro cannot be a Mere
Sum. The same will go for *any* putative object composed of
1-4 which do not have the same persistence conditions as Quadri.
And so *any* fusion resulting in a Mere Sum of 1-4 is
Quadri; and 1-4 compose no other Mere Sums than Quadri. And so
something is Quadri at \(t\_1\) if and only if it has all and only
1-4 as parts at that time. And so all those parts are essential
to it at that
 time.[19]



One can make a further case that sums' parts are essential to
them *over time*. Suppose that simples 1-9 exist at
\(t\_1.\) Assuming UFM, then 1-9 fuse to give us the sum \(S\).
At \(t\_1,\) also by UFM, there is the fusion of 1-8, which we
can call *S*[?]. Since *S*[?] and *S*
have different parts, by
 Leibniz's Law,
 they are distinct. If a sum could lose a part and persist, then it
could be possible for the fusion *S* to come to be made up of
different parts. Suppose that only part 9 is destroyed. If MEM is
false, then *S* could come to be composed of exactly what
*S*[?] is. So, if MEM is false, either (i) *S became*
*S*[?], (ii) *S*[?] went
out of existence, or (iii)
*S* and *S*[?] coincide as distinct sums. But, (i)
cannot be true: two things cannot become one (although this has been
challenged, see Gallois 1998); (ii) cannot be true--how can a
mere mass of matter go out of existence without undergoing any
intrinsic change? (for challenges to this see Burke 1994, Markosian
1998a and 2004); (iii) violates a very clear intuition--if you
have some stuff, and take some of it away, then you do not have the
very same stuff (cf. Jubien 1993 pp. 18-19). So (iii) is false.
But then all of (i)-(iii) are false. And so MEM is true. (For
another challenge to an argument like the foregoing, see van Inwagen
2009.)



So, *if* there can be mere sums, and UFM is true, then we ought
to believe in MEM, even if we do not accept MEO. (Arguments against
MEM can be found in the supplement
 Challenges to Mereological Essentialism for Masses
 and arguments against UFM in section
 3.1.)


#### 2.1.3 How do Sums of Stuff Relate to Ordinary Objects?



Of course, if ordinary objects can change parts, but sums can not,
then it seems that ordinary objects are not mereological sums. But
then, what are they, and how do they relate to the sums which
obviously seem to constitute them?



If one is serious about the existence of sums of matter, it seems
there are only a few ways they could relate to ordinary
 objects.[20]
 One way is to say that sums constitute ordinary objects by
*coinciding* with them. That is, sums are distinct objects
which share all of their parts with the commonsense objects they make
up. One could also *eliminate* ordinary objects. Ordinary
objects either do not exist, or exist in some kind of shadowy or
derivative sense (think of 'the average man'). Another way
is to say that while sums are in fact things or objects, ordinary
objects are a different kind of entity. These *dual-category*
views hold that commonsense objects are in a different ontological
category than sums.



Those who wish to explore in more detail the metaphysics of masses,
ordinary objects, and their relations, can read the supplement on
 Sums and Ordinary Objects.


#### 2.1.4 Are Sums of Stuff Non-Atomic?



Godehard Link and Harry Bunt have argued that the best models of
natural language use of mass expressions will distinguish mass
entities from count by treating the former as if they are non-atomic,
whether or not they actually are. Godehard Link (1998) argues that the
reference of mass expressions is best understood via the development
of a rich model-theoretic semantics, which algebraically models the
interrelated network of talk of mass, plural, and particular entities.
Harry Bunt (1985) subsumes both set theory and mereology into an
axiomatic system called "Ensemble Theory" in order to
model the structure of talk about mass expressions. Link's
account in particular embraces coincidence on a massive scale.



Since Link and Bunt's views are put forward in a relatively
metaphysically neutral way, we will relegate more information about
these views to an appendix. But, if the modeling they propose handles
the linguistic data better than other views then that will give
further support to a theory which embraces both coincidence and
infinite divisibility. Hence these treatments are ontologically
relevant. Examining Link's theory in some detail can show us
just how far distinguishing mass- and count- via the atomic/non-atomic
distinction can take us, and what it can't do for us. See the
supplement
 Non-Atomicity and the Mass/Count Distinction
 for details.


### 2.2 Concrete Mass Expressions Refer to Sets



A slightly less popular way to answer our question is to treat mass
expressions as referring to sets. For instance, suppose there's
some wine on the floor. Roughly, according to the masses-as-sets
theorist, this is equivalent to there being a set of wine bits
(whatever they are) on the floor. If Nancy's ring is gold, then
there is a set of gold molecules which compose or constitute the ring.
If 'the gold' is identified with a set, then some problems
faced by the mereologists are avoided. While a mereologist who is
committed to the existence of the mass of gold is under pressure to
deny the existence of the ring if she wants to avoid coincidence, the
masses-as-sets theorist has a great advantage in that she can say that
both the ring and gold exist but are not coinciding material things,
since the gold, unlike the ring, is a set and not an object.



The masses-as-sets theorist reduces mass expressions to count
expressions, by treating concrete mass expressions (e.g., 'the
gold') as veiled count-expressions (e.g., 'the set of gold
atoms').



One stark problem for the masses-as-sets view (henceforth we will
identify a proponent of this view as a 'set theorist,'
ignoring its more general meaning), is that it identifies
paradigmatically concrete stuffs with what are usually regarded as
paradigmatically abstract objects--sets. How could some gold be a
set? Suppose we can pick out a definite portion of gold which makes up
a ring. If sets are abstract, then the set theorist must say that the
gold is abstract. This is pretty hard to swallow. Abstract things are
not in time or space, but gold is. Also, sets are not identical to
their members. But the gold in the ring *does* seem identical
to the members of the set of gold atoms, not the set itself.
(Regarding issues of 'many-one identity', see Baxter 1988,
Wallace 2011a,b, and see
 section 8 of the entry on identity).



Perhaps the set theorist can instead maintain that masses are sets,
but deny that sets (or at least sets of bits of matter) are abstract.
A set theorist might maintain that sets of physical objects (such as
gold atoms) can be said to be in space in virtue of their members
being in space. The gold, construed as a set of gold atoms, can be
said to weigh ten ounces in virtue of its members collectively
weighing ten ounces. On this kind of view, massy sets have their
physical properties 'by proxy' (Zimmerman 1995, sections 3
and 9).



But, when we try to unpack exactly in which sense the set of gold
atoms is non-abstract, we can see that it is hard to distinguish the
masses-as-sets view from the plurals approach which we will examine
below. The non-abstract set theorist will hold that a set of gold
atoms can in fact have physical properties, in virtue of the
properties of its members. So, a non-abstract set theorist would first
paraphrase "the gold weighs ten ounces" into "that
set of gold atoms weighs ten ounces." But, in order to explain
how a set weighs ten ounces, they would have to again paraphrase and
analyze the latter as something like "the set's
*members* collectively weigh ten ounces." But if the set
theorist has to paraphrase their paraphrase, then there is
considerable pressure for the set theorist to instead switch over to
the stuff-as-plurals view (section
 2.3)
 and just talk directly about the members. If we are just talking
about the members, or the gold atoms, and we can say what we want
about many things without talking about the set of those many things,
then why complicate matters by introducing sets?



There are some problems for the set-theoretic paraphrase. Suppose one
truly says "the melted sugar here is the same sugar that was in
the packet." If 'sugar' in this context referred to
the various lumps and grains of sugar in a packet, then, if there are
no more lumps or grains after the melting, then the set-equality, and
hence the identity-claim, comes out false. As Pelletier points out,
when we identify some stuff, there are many different individuating
standards available (e.g., 'packets of \_\_\_',
'bottles of \_\_\_', 'granules of \_\_\_'), and
different divisions will yield different sets (1974, p. 94).
This ends up either under-determining which identities hold, or,
absurdly, entailing that some stuff is distinct from itself.



In addition, set theorists usually formulate their theory in terms
assuming atomism, yet it seems possible that there is gunky non-atomic
stuff (Zimmerman 1995, SS9, 1996b; Sider 1993). If there are, or
could be, stuffs like this, then standard set-theoretic treatments
will not work, since such theories require all sets to be
well-founded. Another problem is that for some stuffs it is (or seems
to be) indeterminate what, if anything, will count as a smallest unit
of it--e.g., minestrone soup or beer. So, the set theorist has a
problem with non-atomic or fuzzy atomless stuffs (see
 1.4
 for terminology). In what immediately follows, we will only discuss
the issue of non-atomicity.



Suppose there is a cube of completely homogenous and gunky jello on
the table, with no empty space inside. Suppose that the cube
can't survive being sliced or having its parts scattered.
Suppose that the jello composing the cube is a fundamental stuff-kind.
On the set-theoretic proposal, to say that the jello constitutes the
cube is to say that a set of jello-individuals constitutes the cube.
Which individuals? One non-option is the set {cube}, for then the
jello would be identical with the cube, and could not undergo any
changes which the cube could not. So, the set must include at least
two jello individuals. Suppose that the set's members are the
left and right halves of the jello--call them 'Lefty'
and 'Righty'. So, saying that the jello constitutes the
cube is to say that {Lefty, Righty} constitute the cube. But, of
course, there is also the set of Lefty's left half, right half,
and Righty's left and right halves. This set, {Lefty's
left half, Lefty's right half, Righty's left half,
Righty's right half}, is a better candidate to identify with the
jello stuff, since it will survive if cut into four pieces the right
way, whereas {Lefty, Righty} will not. We want to pick out the set of
jello-individuals which can survive any kind of scattering. But, the
problem, of course, is that Lefty's left half is composed of
Lefty's left half's left half, and so on. Since the
postulation of gunk rules out employing a set of point-particles,
there appears to be *no* set of jello-individuals that we can
identify the jello stuff with which can serve to pick out all the
jello stuff *and* account for the persistence conditions of the
stuff (=set) in the right way. So, there is absolutely
*nothing* which is *the* set of individuals which make
up the cube. If we wish to identify the jello stuff with every set
that is some of it, since the members of every set are themselves
composed of further sets, then it is sets 'all the way
down', where we never arrive at members which are not composed
of further members of sets of stuff. Dean Zimmerman notes,



> 
> The mere thought of these "non-well-founded" sets is
> enough to induce vertigo. How could something as concrete and physical
> as a mass of matter be made of *nothing* but sets of sets of
> sets...*ad infinitum?* (1995, p. 99, italics his)
> 



For masses of stuff composed of simples, however, the procedure is
relatively simple--"whenever you have a larger mass
compounded out of smaller masses of the same kind, identify the larger
mass with a set of these smaller masses." There is no way to do
this with gunky masses, since, for any arbitrarily chosen constituting
individual, it itself is a constituted object that needs to have the
same treatment applied to it.



The set-theoretical interpretation has many difficulties, and few
champions. But, this should not be regarded as the last word on the
subject. There are non-well-founded set theories, which could perhaps
get around the foregoing difficulties.


### 2.3 Concrete Mass Expressions Refer to Many Things, Not One Thing: Pluralities and Plural Reference



We do not only speak of individual things, we speak of many things.
Sentences such as "The cheerleaders formed a human
pyramid," or "Those dogs are sick" are examples of
plural predication, quantification, and reference. Some hold that some
plural referring expressions are irreducible to singular predication,
quantification, and reference (Boolos 1984; McKay 2005; Yi 2005).
According to standard logic, "some things are *F*"
is true only if each of those things is *F*. But, as McKay and
others point out, "The students surrounded the building"
could be true even though it is false to say of Bob (one of the
students) that he surrounded the building (McKay 2005, chapter 1).
Those in favor of plural logic argue that we need not countenance sums
or sets to account for plural logic, rather, we can take such
sentences at face value. Those tigers may be distinct from those
lions, but this doesn't require 'the tigers' to
refer to a collection, sum, or particular thing of any stripe.



Some 'pluralists', as we may call those who analyze mass
expressions in terms of plural expressions, hold that mass terms are
used, generally, to refer to many things at once (Nicolas 2002).
'Gold', on most occasions of use, does not refer to a
thing--it refers to many things.



According to an early account (Laycock 1975) statements such as
"the water is boiling" or "Bob took out that
trash" mean "those *water molecules* are
boiling" and "Bob took out those *pieces* of
trash." The idea (also developed more fully later by Nicolas
2008, who, in turn, was inspired by Gillon 1992) that mass expressions
are used to refer to several things at once seems especially promising
for concrete quasi-mass nouns such as *silverware* and
*furniture*, whose reference is particular pieces of silverware
or furniture. Concrete mass nouns such as *beer* will be
paraphrased as referring, depending on context, to bottles, drops,
glasses, gallons, or quantities (in Cartwright's 1979b sense) of
beer.



Pluralists about mass expressions differ most markedly from sum and
set theorists as follows. The set theorist would take 'the water
in Merrihew's cup' to refer to the set of water molecules
in his cup, and the sum theorist would take it to refer to a fusion.
These are both particular entities. But, for the Pluralist, the water
is not a particular thing--it is many things. For example, the
account that Nicolas recommends



> 
> 
> associates to a mass noun [*M*], not a set of things, but some
> things, each of which is *M*...the denotation of the
> expression *the gold on the table*, the *a*s, comprises
> any things that are gold on the table. (2008, 22)
> 
> 
> 



Many claim that plural logic, reference, predication, and
quantification is *ontologically innocent*. That is, we are not
committing ourselves the existence of new entities by employing
plurals, even if we believe that some usage featuring plural reference
is irreducible. Being committed to the existence of 'those
cats' (while adverting to Mr. Furrikens, Chairman Meow, and
Magnificat) is not an additional commitment over and above the
commitment to Mr. Furrikens, Chairman Meow, and Magnificat. When one
pays for this apple, and that apple, one gets 'the apples'
for free. In this respect the ontologically innocent Pluralist has a
leg up over the set and sums theorists, since the former posits no
novel entities. But, to be fair, some sum theorists have argued that
positing sums is 'ontologically innocent'--i.e., when
we have two things, positing a sum of those two things does not
introduce anything in addition to the initial two things. So, there
may be parity in this
 respect.[21]



In some of his early work Laycock makes arguments by analogy to
support the proposal that mass expressions are veiled plural
expressions, so that *water*, in its analysis, gets treated
like *apples* or *Hobbits* does. We turn to the
analogies.



Both mass and plural terms refer cumulatively. Just as any two
portions of water considered together are water, so these apples and
those apples together are apples.



Also, *Hobbits*, just like *water*, resists
pluralization. For the former, this is because Hobbits is already
plural: 'Hobbitses' does not make sense. *Water*
cannot be pluralized and retain its standard reference, since
'waters' either means kinds of water, or different
*bodies* of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, pools, seas, rather
than numerous water *per se*, which doesn't make sense
unless used in a technical or stipulative way). One way to explain
this is to suppose that *water* is already plural.



Both *Hobbits* and *water* do not take the indefinite
article. Neither 'a water' (when not understood in the
kind sense or with an implicit partitioning e.g., 'bottle
of') nor 'a Hobbits' are grammatical. Both mass and
plural expressions take the definite article since 'the'
"does not discriminate between singular and plural"
(Laycock 2006, p. 35). Both *Hobbits* and *water*
take the non-singular analogue of the indefinite
article--'some'. Some Hobbits and some water can both
surround a castle, and neither use implies singularity.



Both mass and plural terms can be prefaced by partitioning and
measurement terms. One could buy seven pounds of applesauce, or seven
pounds of apples. One could sell a jar of applesauce, or a box of
apples, a gallon of marbles, or a gallon of milk.



But, even given the aforementioned similarities, there are significant
differences between mass and plural terms. While one can infer from
"There are peppercorns in the sauce" that there is at
least one peppercorn in the sauce, one cannot infer from "There
is wine in the sauce" that there is at least one (non-kind
usage) wine in the sauce. Furthermore, every plural term (except for
plural invariable terms such as 'cattle' and
'groceries') e.g., 'cats', is correlated with
a singular cognate, e.g., 'cat'. But there are no singular
cognates for mass terms e.g., 'water' or
'silverware'



There is much to say for the pluralist position. Plural logic is
becoming better understood, less controversial, and a case can be made
that standard first-order logic will be subsumed under, or merged
with, plural logic (for discussion of these issues, see the entry on
 plural quantification).
 If this is so, and mass expressions are plural expressions, then mass
expressions can be accounted for in a relatively well understood and
uncontroversial logic which accounts for a wider range of commonsense
inferences than standard logic does.



The pluralist account is quite plausible when we consider atomic mass
expressions, or mass expressions with atomic denotata (def.
'atomic' in
 1.4)
 such as 'silverware', 'furniture', and
'water'. It will become easy to cash out the truth
conditions of such talk in terms of the atomic units, such as pieces
of silverware, furniture, and H2O molecules (Nicolas
2008).



Also in favor of the account is that it does at least as good a job as
the set-theoretical view since it explains the relationship between a
thing and its constituting matter in a similar way, yet posits no
novel entities like sets. There are just the many bits, and the
constituted object of which they are parts. This point has been stated
forcefully by Laycock (1972) and Burke (1997), yet these accounts have
the worrying feature (for some) of not being truly reductive. See
section
 3.1
 for an 'ontologically serious' view of pluralities.



Many of the problems which beset the set theorist confront the
Pluralists as well. What about fuzzy atomless or gunky stuff? If talk
of stuff is to be paraphrased in terms of plural reference, what are
the individuals slotted for this role? With atomic stuffs, it is
clear. But with 'fruitcake' and 'taco sauce'
it is not. Why suppose there is a fact of the matter as to what counts
as stuffs of these kinds? And if there is no fact of the matter then
what are the individuals we are speaking of when we speak of
fruitcake? And our Pluralist has just as much trouble chopping up the
Jello cube as the Set Theorist in
 2.2.



Of course, vagueness and indeterminacy are problems for most theories
of masses, so it could be unfair to overstress this point, and it is
not at all clear that the pluralist can't augment her account
with standard logics of vagueness or employ analogues to set-theoretic
non-well-foundedness moves. (See Chierchia 2010 for an examination of
vagueness and its relation to mass nouns, and a development of a
plural approach, which can be found in many other articles, e.g.
Chierchia 1998a). Given the many salutary components of plural logic
in relation to mass expressions, this remains a promising area of
inquiry.


## 3. Stuff as Distinct From Things



The first three approaches to the referents of nominal concrete mass
expressions in the foregoing section are all relatively conservative.
All three are compatible with Thing Theory as described in
 1.1.
 In this section we will examine views which posit non-thing-like
stuff in addition to things
 (3.1),
 or eliminate things altogether
 (3.2),
 and so are not compatible with Thing Theory.


### 3.1 Serious Pluralities



Some have taken a view of pluralities which is not ontologically
innocent. Henry Laycock and Michael Burke, at times, have tentatively
favored the notion that there is a novel ontic category of plural
entities which are not individual items of quantification.



What is the difference between the ontologically innocent and
ontologically serious pluralists, and what is the case for the serious
position? The serious pluralist can have several motivations. Laycock
(1972) argues that there is definite reference of mass expressions,
such as 'that water', 'the water in the tub',
but that this reference is not singular reference. 'This
water', on a demonstrative occasion, refers, but, "my
contention is that *this water*, unlike this or that drop, is
not a particular object" (1972, p. 4). Laycock claims
that "we can and do think of stuff as having an
*independent* reality [from things]" (1972, p. 27,
italics his). While saying "that there is gold in a certain
region is certainly to assert the existence of
*something*" (1972, p. 28), he does deny that this
'something' is particular, and, throughout his work,
denies that it is a set or a fusion. What definite singular terms like
'the gold in the...' "designate is a quite
distinct type of item, concrete but not particular" (1972,
p. 28).



If one really believes that i) there is water, ii) we make definite
reference to it, iii) water is not a thing (i.e., not a sum or set),
and iv) plural quantification and predication is irreducible to
singular quantification and predication, then one might feel compelled
to accept that mass expressions like *water* and *gold*
refer to genuine entities distinct from (or 'over and
above') the water and gold molecules. Let us call whatever it is
that is referred to with definite reference by mass expressions in
this way 'pluralities' (Laycock and Burke do not use the
phrase, and Laycock would probably find it at best infelicitous, and
at worst a grave source of metaphysical error).



Belief in irreducible pluralities gets more traction when combined
with a denial of unrestricted mereology, which is just what Laycock
does:



> 
> The posit of a physical object without a physical unity--the
> posit of a 'formless' or 'structureless'
> concrete plurality, an arbitrary physical unit upon which there are no
> physical or spatio-temporal constraints--is no mere curiosity: it
> would seem to be a kind of incoherence...the concept of an object
> is the concept of a unit or a unity...A physical object with all
> the physical unity of a set of physical objects, for example
> {Caesar's nose, the Eiffel Tower, the Andromeda galaxy}--a
> physical object in short lacking physical or spatio-temporal
> unity--is no physical object at all. (2006, p. 95)
> 



If one accepts (i)-(iv), and has reason to reject both UFM (see
 2.1.1)
 and the set-theoretical view, and one wants commonsense sentences
featuring mass expressions to come out true, then what is left to be
referred to by nominal statements about water, lead, etc. except
pluralities?



Another motivation can be found in Burke (1997), inspired by Laycock.
Burke was concerned to resolve the coincidence puzzle between not only
a thing and its constituting piece of matter, but between these things
and the matter *per se*. (Since some copper can persist past
the shattering of a piece of copper which constitutes a statue, then
presumably the copper is distinct from either). Burke's account,
all the details of which do not concern us here (see the entry on
 material constitution
 and the supplement
 Sums and Ordinary Objects
 for details) requires that the statue and piece of copper be
identical. If this is so, and the statue comes into existence, and is
identical with its constituting piece, then a new piece must come into
existence and the old one cease to be. One of the options Burke
canvasses to explain why it is that we (mistakenly) assume the piece
continues in existence is because *the copper* persists through
the change:



> 
> Of course, this explanation concedes that the statue...shares its
> place with *something*, namely, the copper. So am I not
> allowing coinciding objects after all? No, I am not, since I deny that
> the copper is a single object. Following Laycock (1972) , I claim that
> the copper is a plurality. It is many objects... The case of the
> statue and the copper is not a case of coinciding objects because it
> is not a case in which one object occupies the same place as any one
> other. (1997, p. 12, italics his)
> 



Burke denies the identification of the many copper bits and the piece
of copper:



> 
> Well, I hold that each of the many is a part of the one, but I deny
> that the many parts collectively are identical with the
> one...Trivially, the many are many. But it is not individually
> that they are many. (They are one each.) So the many collectively are
> many. But 'many' and 'one' are contrary. So
> the many collectively are not one. But, again trivially, the one is
> one. So it is false that the many collectively are identical with the
> one. (1997, p. 13)
> 



It is doubtful, though, that postulating pluralities which are not
things can solve the coincidence puzzles. Burke, who himself brought
up a similar objection to coincidence in general, faces the following
problem. How are distinct entities, such as the statue and the copper,
different in sort, given that they both have the same intrinsic
properties? There seems to be a one to one correspondence between the
features of the statue and those of the copper. Why isn't the
copper a statue, for the same reasons the piece of copper is? Burke
can insist that the main difference is that the statue/piece is one
thing, whereas the copper is many things, but it is not clear why
withholding the honorific *thing* from 'the' copper
plurality solves the problem (Zimmerman 1997, p. 23).



It is unclear what the addition of the attribution of 'concrete
non-particulars' to the plural analysis is doing, and doubtful
that it clarifies matters. (See Steen 2011 for a critique of
'contingent non-particularity'). Indeed it seems to
somewhat back away from the plural analysis. The initial reason for
analyzing concrete mass expressions in terms of plural quantification
and predication is that talk about 'the lions' and
'those Hobbits' is relatively unproblematic. But then, why
reduce mass expressions to plural reference if one holds that
*water* or a water plurality is something over and above
*those water molecules*, yet denies that *the lion
plurality* is something over and above *those lions*?
It's not clear why both water and lions get a plural reference
treatment, yet the referents of mass expressions get to retain some
kind of ontological halo which distinguishes their referents from
non-mass plural expressions. Laycock (2006) no longer holds (and only
tentatively held) that mass expressions are plural.


### 3.2 World-Stuff



Some stuff ontologists eliminate concrete things altogether. There is
only stuff, objects being accidental phases of objectively
non-objectual stuff. Alternatively, concepts are thought of as
'cookie-cutters', which conventionally carve
pseudo-objects (*cf* Dummet 1981, chap 16) out of the amorphous
world-blob, which either is not itself an object (Sidelle 1989), or is
the only object there is (Horgan & Potrc 2000,
 2008).[22]



Alan Sidelle (1989, 1991, 1998) argues that while stuff exists, there
are no things which exist and actually have the essences we believe
they do. In 1998 he argues that we should regard the unraveling of a
sweater, or the chopping down of a tree, *not* as substantial
changes in which things cease to be, but rather as accidental changes
in underlying, persisting stuff (compare also Needham 2010):



> 
> the intuitive [claim] we are here considering amounts to the claim
> that while there are trees, sweaters, and other ordinary objects, our
> ordinary substance terms are not, in fact, substance terms, but pick
> out these objects according to accidental properties...Being a
> tree, or a sweater, is an accidental property of something more basic.
> 



*What* is more basic? *Stuff*. Supposed substantial
change in objects is actually accidental change to some stuff. Sidelle
diagnoses the phenomenon of coincidence as a species of the problem of
individuation:



> 
> Whether there is coincidence is fundamentally the question of whether
> there can be more than one criterion of identity instantiated at a
> given location, that is, whether, for any location taken to contain an
> object, the various seemingly possible criteria of identity can all be
> ruled out as false, save one. (1998, p. 441)
> 



He claims that the problem of coincident entities arises not due to
the diversity of individuals in a region, but rather due to the fact
that the world as it is under-determines which principles of
individuation are the correct ones to employ. We can treat any
property as accidental or as essential by employing different sortals,
or nominal essences, to describe a thing. When a cow dies, we can
describe this either as the accidental change in some flesh-and-bones,
or the substantial change in a cow which is no more. Sidelle
concludes, in a Lockean vein, that which changes we conceive of as
substantial and which as accidental is more a function of us and our
interests than of the way things really are (1998, p. 439).



Sidelle goes on to note that the main cause of our philosophical
puzzles about objects is the dogmatic assumption that there are some,
together with our employing the concept *object*. "It is
*objects* which have made the problem, and the solution
isn't to switch *which* objects we allow, but to disallow
objects altogether" (1998, p.441).



Sidelle recommends, tentatively, that we describe the world without
quantification over things, and deny that "there is genuine,
world-given individuation." Furthermore, as it is supposedly
obvious that there is at least stuff, we should suppose so, and
theoretically regard the role of the 'world-stuff' as
"the mind-independent matter of the world which, among other
things, determines our perceptions" (1998, p. 443).



One problem for this view is that it is virtually indistinguishable
from a Quinean view according to which a physical object is just
"the content, however heterogeneous, of some portion of
space-time, however disconnected and gerrymandered" (Quine 1960,
p. 171). Our sortals, according to a type of Quinean, are used
to pick out definite filled portions, and any and all of these are
objects. What Sidelle calls 'stuff' Quine (or Jubien in
1993) is happy to call an 'object'. If Sidelle's
stuff talk is inter-translatable into Quinean thing-talk then there is
merely a terminological difference between the posit of World-Stuff
and the posit of arbitrary things.



A further strange point about this view is that it entails that, just
as there are no objects which have the persistence conditions that we
think, there are no non-fundamental stuffs. The very same arguments
given for rejecting ordinary objects and reducing them to world stuff
can be given for water molecules and sodium chloride. Electrolysis can
be seen not as the destruction of water but as a change in persisting
underlying stuff. This can be carried on until we get to the
fundamental stuff(s). Hydrogen can be seen as a phase of a proton and
an electron, and a proton can be seen as a phase of quarks and gluons.
So, it seems that elements and complexes, since they are not the
fundamental or non-individuated world-stuff, must also be the result
of conceptual carvings.



What about fundamental particles (assuming there are some)?
They've got to go as well, if we assume they are objects. If
there are in fact gluons and electrons which exist, are objects, and
are particular things with identity and persistence conditions, then,
if they are in fact simple they form the basis out of which we could
construct the other objects. So, if non-individual world stuff is
going to play a role, it seems that we must eliminate fundamental
particles as well. This approach allows too much physics to be done
from the armchair. (Other criticisms of views like Sidelle's can
be found in Denkel 1989, 1995; Laycock 1989; Steen 2011; Turner 2011;
and meta-ontological criticisms of these kind of disagreements can be
found in Eklund 2008. And, while not directly addressed in the
following sources, a template for the criticism that these varying
views about stuff vs. things may be a 'disagreement without a
difference' can be found in Hirsch 2002 and Carnap 1950).



It must be noted, though, that such a World-Stuff view is similar to
some interpretations of elementary particle physics and quantum
theory. Some scientists and philosophers of science do in fact argue
that at bottom the world is not a world of things or objects (or not
entities we would unqualifiedly apply 'object' to).
Rather, the basic stuff is non-particular
 mass-energy,
 or evolving local quantum states (Arntzenius 2012 SS3.14), or
fields, wave-functions, or spacetime itself (Malament 1996, Wallace
and Timpson 2007), or structures (Ladyman and Ross 2009), or a kind of
physics-friendly *materia prima* (Esfeld *et al* 2017).
Some argue that the only real entity is the space-time fabric,
ordinary objects just being temporary warpings or disturbances in it.
On such views both ordinary macroscopic objects and putative
fundamental particles are only epiphenomenal entities or temporary
manifestations in the electromagnetic or gravitational fields (or
other entities), which are fundamentally non-individual--some
kind of world stuff or spacetime and its features (for details, see
the entry
 identity and individuality in quantum theory).
 So, one should not rule out such views *tout court*. But,
given the flux and opacity of such views, the untestability of some of
the theories which underly some of these views (e.g. String Theory),
and the lack of scientific consensus on these issues, one should not
quickly and whole-heartedly embrace the notion of fundamental
non-particular stuff either. These views merit further examination,
but their adequate demonstration in part rests upon succesful
advancements in physics and, for a layperson, a clear understanding of
these interpretations, each of which may not come anytime soon.


## 4. Stuff and Things and the Limits of Linguistically-Guided Metaphysics



The foregoing entry represents a detailed case-study of metaphysical
views which are heavily guided by syntactical, lexical, and semantic
considerations, but freed from some of the methodological constraints
and more narrow objectives of linguists and semanticists. Often in the
preceding we have seen how the
+MASS/+COUNT distinction was used to
motivate a parallel 'metaphysically serious' stuff/thing
distinction. The question to be briefly addressed here, after looking
back on sixty years of work on the topic, is: to what extent is
the +MASS/+COUNT distinction up to
the tasks assigned to it by metaphysicians?



Such tasks often serve two main functions: constructive, and
prohibitive. The constructive aspect is the idea that we can (and
should) 'read off' the correct (or what we think is the
correct) ontology from our language use. The prohibitive aspect is the
idea that if syntax, semantics, or lexical meaning prohibits (or
renders incoherent, or non-well-formed) certain constructions, then we
can not (or should not) be ontologically committed to what the
impermissible renderings would commit us to. Often the constructive
and prohibitive work hand-in-hand, such as we have seen by noting how
the fact that 'wine' cannot be prefaced with numerals
(without referring to kinds) has lead many to think that wine cannot
be a thing (prohibitive), and that, since wine exists, and can be
measured, that it must be instead stuff (constructive).



But can the +MASS/+COUNT distinction do
this much metaphysical work in a reliable way?


### 4.1 Mass/Count Interchangeability, Arbitrariness, and Non-Universality


#### **Interchangeability**



As an introductory example of the topic of interchangeability,
consider these well-known lyrics from the musical *Sweeney*
*Todd*:



> 
> 
> TODD: (spoken) These are desperate times,
>   
> 
> Mrs. Lovett, and desperate measures are called for!
>   
> 
> LOVETT: Here we are, now! Hot out of the oven!
>   
> 
> TODD: What is that?
> 
> 
> 
> LOVETT: It's priest. Have a little priest.
>   
> 
> TODD: Is it really good?
>   
> 
> LOVETT: Sir, it's too good, at least!
>   
> 
> Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh,
>   
> 
> So it's pretty fresh.
>   
> 
> ...
>   
> 
> TODD: Haven't you got poet, or something like that?
>   
> 
> LOVETT: No, y'see, the trouble with poet is
>   
> 
> 'Ow do you know it's deceased?
>   
> 
> Try the priest!
> 
> 
> 
> (Lyrics from *Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet
> Street*)
> 
> 
> 



As Pelletier has frequently noted (e.g. 1989, 2001, 2011, 2012a,
2012b), even if one wants to ignore putative metaphysical distinctions
for distinguishing mass and count, instead maintaining that there are
merely syntactical, lexical, or semantical ones--there remain
significant problems for distinguishing mass vs. count. And if such
fundamental linguistic problems are still outstanding, then the
prospects of employing the +MASS/+COUNT
distinction as the basis for a strong metaphysical distinction are
 hazy.[23]
 Let's see why.



Every criterion put forth for distinguishing between
+MASS and +COUNT faces
significant--and seemingly systematic--counterexamples. We
attempted to side-step such problems in
 Section 1
 by stipulating that there is a difference between
'nouns/terms/expressions used with a mass sense,' versus
'nouns/terms/expressions used with a count sense,' but
forebore giving an account of what gives particular instances the
sense they do have. (More detail on this can be found in the
 "Logic of Mass Expressions"
 entry). Then, using the rough-and-ready characterization of
+COUNT versus +MASS (or things versus
stuff) we, mirroring our authors, went on to exploit the distinction
for our ends of taxonomizing the world's inhabitants and
describing their features.



But, this stipulation ignores the following kinds of problems. Suppose
we accept that syntactic criteria (as covered in
 Section 1)
 are doing the distinguishing. The problem with this is that every
putatively +MASS/-COUNT noun admits of
-MASS/+COUNT instances, and we cannot
tell the difference based on syntax alone. But if this is so, then we
would need "syntactic derivation rules to convert each noun from
one to the other category--a terrible syntactic idea (or double
entries for every lexical noun--another terrible syntactic idea)
... once [this is done] ..., then the
+MASS/-COUNT features do no syntactic work: they never
rule out any construction as ungrammatical on their own"
(Pelletier 2011, pp. 22-23).



Any supposed count noun can have mass instances, and vice versa. For
example, employing something like the 'Universal Grinder'
idea of Pelletier (1979, pp. 5-6) we can imagine any putative
count-item C as being ground up so that there is 'C all over the
floor.' The quoted passage above from *Sweeney Todd* is
an example of how count-terms for kinds of people are easily
transformed into mass terms to refer to the stuffs in (or kinds of)
meat-pies served to the unwittingly cannibalistic customers. The
Universal Grinder idea relies more on the ease with which we can
switch from +COUNT to +MASS than it does
on any actual grinding (cf. Chierchia 2010 and 2021, Rothstein 2010 p.
390-4). We can refer to any individual (be it ground or whole)
in a 'massy' way. Think of how Mark's spouse might
think, 'there's a lot more Mark now after the
quarantine' if he gained a lot of weight. These instances of
'grinding', which may seem peculiar or violent, have been
argued to be merely "realizations of a regular polysemy"
(Kiss *et al* 2021b, 379).



Bunt (1985) discussed the reverse operation(s):
(+MASS/-COUNT ->
-MASS/+COUNT), which comes in two
varieties. The first is the 'Universal Sorter', which
sorts into *kinds*, such as with 'Voodoo Brewery sells
six beers.' The second is the 'Universal Packager'
(Pelletier 1975), which puts masses into *portions*, as with
'we'll have six beers,' or 'there are four
butters in the package.' (Granted, there is a change in sense in
these cases, but, as addressed below, this doesn't undermine the
notion that these nouns are polysemous, and so also does not undermine
the point of interchangeability without a lexical switch). We can
refer to any stuff (be it packaged, atomistic, or neither) in a
particular way.



Huddleston & Payne, in *The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language* (Huddleston & Pullum (eds.), 2002, pp. 334-5,
cited in Pelletier 2011 and 2012), show convincingly that such
transformations are ubiquitous and do not at all support the notion
that [*chocolate* (+MASS/-COUNT)]
('he had a lot of chocolate') is a different *word*
than [*chocolate* (-MASS/+COUNT)]
('he had three chocolates'). 'Chocolate' is
polysemous, not homonymous. In addition to the lack of syntactic
features to distinguish between mass and count terms, there are no
inherent lexical features either.



So if syntax or lexical meaning won't do it, maybe a semantic
distinction will do? Huddleston & Payne go on to distinguish
between the *heterogeneity* of terms like
'crockery' and 'furniture', which are not
dissective, versus terms like 'water,' which are (2002,
336-7). (They call the former sort of mass terms
'aggregative'). But if dissectivity is taken seriously as
a semantic requirement to be considered as mass, then it will end up
that an H2O molecule is not water, nor is an NaCl molecule
salt. (More on the non-atomic criteria is discussed in the Supplement
on
 Non-Atomicity and Its Relevance to the Mass/Count Distinction).
 As the authors point out (p338), when some material comes in small
enough units, we often treat it as
+MASS/-COUNT, such as *dust*,
*hair* (e.g. when there's scattered piles of it on the
floor), *change* (i.e., coins)--not because we
think the stuff is non-atomic, but because when the atoms are small
enough it is more convenient or intuitive to think of it in a
+MASS way. Dissectivity may do some work, but only to a
point, and so it's not really what is distinguishing mass from
count. And we cannot appeal to language-users' intentions in
particular instances to settle whether their use is mass or count
because it may be "that in most instances speakers simply have
no intentions that are relevant" (Pelletier 2001 p496,
summarizing Ware 1975). Often, people's use, mental states, and
the nature of the referent under-determine whether on a particular
occasion a noun/term/expression is used in a mass or count manner.



Cumulativity may be a more dogged criterion, as it is relatively
consistent for two (+COUNT/-MASS)
N's not to be an N, e.g. two people don't seem to be a
person, whereas some (-COUNT/+MASS) N
and some other N are N, e.g. two bits of water are water. But there
are many counterexamples to this as well. If there is an aggregate of
well-demarcated individuals, then the aggregation of it with another
yields an aggregate. Two connected but discrete planes can compose a
plane, and some robots could be made to, Voltron-style, compose a
robot. Or, less exotically, in certain circumstances two fleets or
armies could compose a fleet or army. Granted, these are somewhat
artificial examples, and cumulativity does seem to be much more common
in +MASS than +COUNT, but it is not
distinguished in this from +PLURAL. (See Sections
 2.3
 and
 3.1
 for accounts which reduce mass reference to plural reference).



There is empirical work which militates against the standard criteria
put forward for differentiating mass and count, and also questions the
over-reliance of researchers on their own intuitions about the
distinction (Kiss *et al*, 2017). Reflection upon recent
empirical evidence in language-acquisition has led some researchers to
tentatively conclude that particular nouns themselves, whether mass or
count, "do not encode full conceptual criteria for
individuation, but instead encode partial criteria that are filled out
pragmatically, by contrasting alternative descriptions of objects and
their parts" (Srinivasan and Barner 2020, p159). But it would be
irresponsible to suggest that there is just 'nothing to'
the mass/count distinction, nor any universal or near-universal
distinguishing features (See Chierchia 2010 p.4). One can maintain
that while there are different mass and count senses, that
nevertheless, *all* nouns are *both* mass and count, as
we see defended in Pelletier 2012b. (For challenges to this, see Kiss
*et al* 2021b). Yet others argue that it is not the distinction
between mass and count that matters so much, rather what matters is
the more general distinction between being +COUNT and
+NON-COUNT (Laycock 2006b & 2006c, Rothstein 2010,
Wiese 2012, and see chapter 1 of Massam 2012 for other proposed
replacements to, or more general alternatives to, the mass/count
distinction).


#### **Arbitrariness**



Relying on the +MASS/+COUNT distinction
to support any strong metaphysical conclusions has the additional
problem that, in many cases, whether we use a mass or count term
appears to be almost completely arbitrary (and certainly
non-universal, see the next section). The following is a chart which
lists many nouns in English and shows how their translations
frequently diverge in terms of being +MASS or
+COUNT (The following examples are from Pelletier 2001,
2011; Chierchia 1998a, 2010):




Cross-Linguistic Mass/Count Variation| *dandruff*

(+MASS/-COUNT) | French: *les pellicules*

(-MASS/+COUNT) lit. 'the
films' |
| *dish*(*es*)

(-MASS/+COUNT) | French: *la vaisalle*

(+MASS/-COUNT) |
| *furniture*

(+MASS/-COUNT) | German: *ein mobel*

(-MASS/+COUNT) |
| *news*

(+MASS/-COUNT) | German: *eine nachricht*

(-MASS/+COUNT) lit. 'a
news' |
| *strawberry*

(-MASS/+COUNT) | Russian: *klubnika* /
klubnika

(+MASS/-COUNT) |



Even *within* English often the use seems arbitrary, where the
following illustrate cases where either (i) the choice to use a
+MASS/-COUNT or
-MASS/+COUNT term is (usually) arbitrary
on the occasion of use, or (ii) where a contrast is given (e.g.
between *fruit* and *vegetables*) where one can see that
our decision to make the default noun mass and another count is
arbitrary, since there is no inherent mass/count difference in the
referents. (These examples, and the point, are from Pelletier 1989
p19, and 2012 p429, and Gillon 1992 p.627, 2012 p.721).




| +MASS/-COUNT | -MASS/+COUNT |
| --- | --- |
| fruit | vegetables |
| flu | cold |
| spaghetti | noodle |
| footware | shoes |
| change | coins |
| knowledge | belief |
| rice | beans |
| baklava | brownies |
| foliage | leaves |
| ammunition | bullets |


#### **Non-Universality**



Strawson
 (1959) introduced the notion of 'descriptive metaphysics'
to self-describe his attempt to explain what 'individuals'
are, according to ordinary language. Projects like this do not seek to
carve out the ontic joints in nature so much as show where 'the
folk' supposedly think such joints are, as implied by their
language use. Projects like this represent attempts to describe our
metaphysical picture of the world rather than argue that the picture
is right.



Prescriptive metaphysics, by contrast, seeks to argue for particular
metaphysical views that may not gel with commonsense or ordinary
language. Prescriptive metaphysics often relies on the descriptive in
order to advance its agenda--sometimes as a foil, other times as
a baseline from which to deviate minimally only when required, or
regarded as an oppressive thought system that we need liberation from,
and so on. Often prescriptivists are descriptivists inasmuch as they
attempt to 'paraphrase' their replacement ontology into
the language of the folk and its implicit ontology, and the
availability of such a paraphrase is sometimes thought to be required
for the replacement ontology to be considered successful. Such a
paraphrase requires doing descriptive metaphysics.



Yet the descriptive is not free from prescriptivity either, since
there are obviously disagreements amongst practitioners of descriptive
metaphysics, and conflicting intuitions about what 'our'
implicit ontology is. And so descriptivists argue that we should
accept one descriptive view over another, but such arguments often
rely on pointing out that the opponents' view cannot be a
correct view of reality, or rely on a principle of charity that
requires attempting to massage the folk view so that it ends up being
correct as a depiction of reality, which in turn relies on the
prescriptive non-universal intuitions of the descriptive
metaphysician. Any sufficiently rich descriptive metaphysics is not
free from some prescriptive content. And so they need each other, and
are inextricably intertwined.



Most of the foregoing metaphysicians (not necessarily philosophers of
language or linguists) we have examined have practiced a sort of mixed
methodology. One starts by pointing out the commonsense distinction in
English between mass and count, and one then proceeds to develop a
picture which can both explain, and be consistent with, ordinary talk,
as well as solving whichever particular problems the metaphysician in
question is concerned with. Often one takes the ordinary language
distinction as evidence in their view's favor, together with
various prescriptively informed premises not necessarily endorsed by
folk ontology.



The problem with this procedure is that the distinction between mass
and count is often employed by metaphysicians to make universal
conclusions about 'our' (i.e., humanity's) implicit
conceptual scheme, usually by merely examining *English* (or
the one to three Indo-European languages known by the author).



As one early critic of Strawson's method noted (Mei 1961, cited
in Pelletier 2011 pp. 37-8):



> 
> 
> Strawson exploits facts peculiar to languages like English ... in
> Chinese, Strawson's criteria are inapplicable ... [his]
> ... Aristotelian arguments based upon the pecularities of English
> and its relatives ... [Strawson's notion of]
> 'assertive ties', and subject-predicate
> 'congruence' only works for languages with sufficient
> inflection .... Strawson's silence [about other languages]
> can be interpreted in only two ways. He must either have thought that
> they conform to his criterion or that they are irrelevant. But the
> grammatical facts of Chinese do not conform to his criterion ...
> and to say that they are irrelevant is to claim that English is the
> paradigm of all languages. What justification can Strawson, or any of
> his colleagues, offer for this act of linguistic imperialism? (Mei
> 1961 p157, most truncation and interpolation is Pelletier's)
> 
> 
> 



While the mass/count distinction is relatively pervasive, it is not
clearly universal. Some (e.g. Sharvy 1978) have argued that Mandarin
has no count nouns at all, and rather refers to individuals by
imposing a measure or classifier on what are by default mass nouns.
So, for example, 'a cigarette'
('Xiang Yan ') is best understood as something like
'a stick's worth of cigarette-stuff.' But others
(e.g. Cheng & Sybesma 1999, Cherchia 2010) have argued that we are
to look for the +MASS/-COUNT distinction
in the classifier system itself (*cf* Pelletier 2011 p30),
while yet others argue that there just is no distinction between mass
and count in Mandarin. In an opposite fashion, Whorf (1944) argued
that Hopi has only count nouns, and Davis and Matthewson (2009) have
argued that the Lillooet Salish language lacks mass nouns
entirely.



While ignoring the details, The Dene
Suline language (spoken by the Dene or
Chipeweyan people of Northwest Canada) arguably does not have a
mass/count distinction whatsoever, nor do the Amazonian languages
Karitiana or Yudja. (See Pelletier 2011 p31, and a challenge to this
in Chierchia 2021. See Wiltschko 2012 for an examination of languages
which lack a mass/count distinction, and for extremely recent and
copious work on this see the Kiss, Pelletier, and Husic (eds.) 2021
collection).



While it hasn't been definitively demonstrated that the
mass/count distinction is not universal (cf. Chierchia 2021), neither
can one easily claim that it is (cf. Massam 2012 ch.1). Maybe its
universality is not needed for their purposes, but authors frequently
seem to argue that syntactical, lexical, or semantic features of mass
vs. count give one strong reason to believe that such a distinction
goes beyond the representational and reflects reality itself.


### 4.2 From Arbitrariness to Mass/Count Skepticism?



If the following summary propositions are all true:


1. It is arbitrary whether a term we decide to use is mass or count
(e.g. *leaves* vs. *foliage*),
2. Every supposed mass noun can be used in a count sense, and every
supposed count noun can be used in a mass sense,
3. The mass/count distinction is not universal (or at least not
obviously so),



then this calls into question the licitness of metaphysicians'
heavy reliance on the distinction in furthering their descriptive and
prescriptive projects. This does not mean that these metaphysical
views are not worth arguing for, or entertaining, but that the
particular ways they have been argued for could reasonably be doubted
by one we could call a 'Mass/Count Skeptic.' A Mass/Count
Skeptic is one who thinks that the mass/count distinction is a red
herring with regards to laying out either a descriptive or
prescriptive metaphysics, since the undeterdetermination of
(metaphysical) theory by (linguistic) data in this matter is acute.
This does not mean that one should not engage in metaphysical
arguments about stuff vs things, but perhaps the mass/count
distinction is not as firm a foundation as many have thought. After
demonstrating some of the preceding kinds of considerations, Pelletier
says



> 
> 
> the facts surrounding how +MASS/+COUNT
> is manifested in languages other than the Indo-European ones might
> seem to show that the basis and rationale for making the
> distinction--and perhaps any philosophical consequences that
> might seem to follow from the distinction--are not really valid
> as claims about reality in general or about how people might
> conceptualize reality. (Pelletier 2012a p435).
> 
> 
> 



In an earlier piece, Pelletier says "it seems there is nothing
in the referent of the terms that should make *fruit* mass and
*vegetable* count, *baklava* mass and *brownie*
count, *rice* mass and *bean* count" (2001 p497).
When we are not thinking about linguistics or metaphysics, and have to
go about our business, we see that sometimes it is convenient to look
at its inhabitants in a massy way ('I've got 1000 pounds
of furniture to ship,' 'I had too much fruitcake'),
and sometimes in a count way ('*Large-Haired Real Estate
Agent's Quarterly* says that a dining table, six chairs, and
credenza are necessary for ideal dining room staging,' 'We
need two fruitcakes for the party'). Whenever we have some stuff
or particles whose smallest macroscopically visible bits are identical
or interchangeable, and they can be gathered or stuck together or can
act together in a macroscopic way (e.g. air/wind), we tend to think of
it in massy way, and, as regards its small-scale structure, there just
is no folk pre-scientific commonsense commitment to either atomism or
not (*cf* Ware 1975, *pace* Bunt 1985, Link 1998). The
only reason that *rice* is mass and *beans* count is
probably because the former are smaller and harder to distinguish, or
count separately. *Change* becomes *coins* when we want
to count them, whereas *humans* become *flesh* when
their individuality is regarded as unimportant, e.g. in the following
real-world example. One Dr. Albert Klingman, when beginning medical
experiments on prisoners, upon first seeing them (many who were
shirtless), said that "All I saw before me were acres of skin.
It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time"
(Munson & Lague, 2017, 133).



It's an open question how a metaphysician with a hardcore
commitment to following the dictates of language should adjust their
methodology, at least as regards the mass/count distinction, given the
foregoing. Suppose one wants to become more inclusive, and follow not
merely the dictates of their own language (or even their larger
language group), and instead decides to constrain and shape their
metaphysical theories only by the most general aspects of shared human
grammar, syntax, or semantics. Supposing that there even are some
universal semantic features (or a 'Universal Grammar', a
non-settled hypothesis), it seems that the mass/count distinction is
not among them (again--not settled). Then it seems that the
linguistically-guided metaphysician must accept either that a
'metaphysically serious' distinction between stuff and
things cannot be maintained whatsoever, or, it can be. If it can be,
it must be in some watered-down fashion. (E.g., maybe reality contains
neither stuff nor things, but has beings which can be regarded either
way--cf. Pelletier 2001). It may be that the most universal
commonalities of all human language will not impose nearly as much
structure or guidance as linguistically-guided metaphysicians would
wish, at least as regards mass vs. count.



Alternatively, one can be a Mass/Count Skeptic, and, while not ceasing
to do metaphysics, or theorize about the difference between
'stuff'/'matter' and
'things'/'individuals,' cease relying on the
mass/count distinction to do the lion's share of work in
deciding whether there is such a corresponding ontological difference
in the world. (cf. Pelletier 2011, SS3.2). That's not what
it's there for.



While the reservations expressed in this section may seem pessimistic,
they are not, as these observations are serving to move us forward.
Much exciting and useful work is being done and remains to be done on
the mass/count distinction, as mentioned below, and
linguistically-guided metaphysicians will have a role to play in this
inter-disciplinary work. It may just be that metaphysicians will have
to become more nuanced in their appreciation of mass vs. count, as
there will likely become ever more fine-grained distinctions and
qualifications to
 consider.[24]



Furthermore, the direction of the vast growing empirical data needs to
be reckoned with, which makes early oracular pronouncements from the
armchair seem quaint. Linguistically-guided metaphysicians working at
the crossroads of philosophy of language, logic, and metaphysics, need
not merely follow the lead of linguists and semanticists, but can, and
should, play a role in this work, as they come at this topic with
different concerns and different skill-sets which matter. The
considerations in this last section represent a tentative reappraisal
of the value of continuing to practice a certain methodological stance
in the light of recent developments. It could very well be that new
data, and new theories could show how the distinction between mass and
count actually is as important as many have thought, perhaps by
resurrecting itself in a new guise, such as the distinction between
+COUNT and -COUNT. Furthermore, we can never be sure what new
discoveries will be made in fundamental physics which could suddenly
make us re-evaluate, revise, abandon, or double-down on the picture we
have of matter, ordinary objects, and their relations.




---



Mass expressions and their relations to count expressions, and how
they are interpreted and employed by metaphysicians, offer us an
interesting and voluminous case-study of recent metaphysics informed
by lexical, semantic, and syntactic considerations. The careful
student of this material can take away many cautionary tales, useful
tools, and become aware of just how different the responses to the
same linguistic data can be. This is a very difficult and woolly area
of inquiry where there is little consensus. But interesting recent
empirical work on mass and count expressions is being done which is
shedding some new light on these issues, and there has been an
explosion of recent work in linguistics which does seem to display
genuine progress, the most fecund research being more heavily
empirical than before. (For earlier empirically-informed work on this,
see Casati 2005, and Frisson & Frazier 2005. For more recent
relevant work, see Husic 2020, Kiss *et al* 2021a, Kiss
*et al* 2017; Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014; Massam 2012;
Moltmann 2020; and see the references mentioned in Pelletier 2012
p435).



Hopefully, philosophers can work together with linguists, computer
scientists, cognitive scientists, and others to help achieve some kind
of breakthrough that can comprehend the mass/count distinction, and in
so doing situate it properly into a role it is well-suited for to help
us understand more deeply the relations between mental representation,
linguistic representation, and represented real-world entities.



The category of *Stuff* is still under-developed, and seems to
be where the category *Event* was decades ago. *Stuff*
and stuff-talk represent either (i) an important ontological category,
which remains poorly understood, or, (ii) a distinct way of conceiving
or talking about objects, where its interface with object-talk is,
again, poorly understood. In the absence of consensus on the referents
and logico-linguistic mechanics of mass expressions, controversy about
stuff is bound to continue.