ABSTRACT
The material covered up to now has been preparatory, in many ways, for what lies ahead. As I enter the topic of aggregates – or things made up of other ‘‘smaller’’ things – matters quickly become complicated. It will be helpful to pause and look at the general textual and conceptual situation. The tension between the claims of the Idealist theory of aggregates and
the Realist one emanates from Leibniz’s writings. But the same tension exists in our ordinary thinking. Nearly everyone thinks a sand dune has no real integrity, with grains constantly blowing away and being replaced by others and yet the ‘‘same dune’’ remaining. Indeed, it seems that the singleness of ‘‘a dune’’ lies only in our minds. For convenience’s sake, we simply summarize the grains as one big heap, but are not at all committing ourselves to the existence of a dune in nature. Thus a sand dune seems minddependent – in line with Idealism. But Realism also asserts itself when we confront the question of whether
the dune is merely an appearance in our minds – say, a dream image – as it would be on an exclusively Idealist analysis. The dune is composed of grains, and the grains themselves seem not to be mind-dependent. Thus the dune may borrow from them whatever measure of mind-independence it has so as to distinguish it from the ‘‘dream-image dune.’’ In this sense the dune is mind-independent, or, in the terms I’m using here, ‘‘real.’’ If one substitutes ‘‘substances’’ for ‘‘grains’’ in that story, one is well on the
way to understanding Leibniz’s struggles with aggregates.
