1. A Pseudo-Question: How Many Things are There?

A while back, in response to a reader's question, I argued that one cannot count things as things. I can count the cats in my house, the tiles on my roof, and 'in principle' the subterranean termites within two feet of my foundation. What I cannot do is count things (entities, beings, existents, items, objects, etc.) as things. The reason, briefly, is that 'thing,' unlike 'cat,' is not a sortal. It is a dummy sortal. It is a term that functions grammatically like a sortal, and can serve as a placeholder for a sortal, but is logically unlike a sortal in that it supplies no criteria of identification and re-identification for the things to which it applies. I can count the cats in my house because I know what it is to be a cat; I know what 'counts' as a cat and what does not 'count' as a cat: the lifespan of a cat is not a cat; the location of a cat is not a cat; the posture of a cat is not a cat; the parts of a cat are not cats; the properties and relations of a cat are not cats, etc.

But I can't count the things in my house because I don't know what all counts as a thing, and what all doesn't. Are only middle-sized specimens of dry goods things? Or are persons also things? Are my cats things? Is their blackness a thing? Everything black is colored. So do I count the cat as one thing, its blackness as a second thing, the being colored of the cat as a third thing? If I have a cat on my lap, do I have at least three things on my lap, or only one, or perhaps a countable or (heaven forbid) an uncountable infinity of things on my lap? And what about the parts of the cat, and the parts of the parts, and how far do we go with that? To the molecular level. the atomic level. the quark level?

I trust the point is clear: one cannot count things (entities, etc.) as things. It seems to follow that the question 'How many things are there?' is a pseudo-question. It is a pseudo-question because it is unanswerable in principle. 'Many' and 'more than one' are not answers. A Parmenidean monist might insist that there is exactly one thing, and a nihilist that there are none.

2. Why is There Anything at All? A Pseudo-Question?

But now a vexing question arises: does the fact that 'thing' is a dummy sortal, hence not a sortal, constitute a reason for holding that the question 'Why is there anything (any thing) at all?' is also a pseudo-question? Stephen Maitzen answers in the affirmative in his paper, Stop Asking Why There's Anything. (Thanks to Vlastimil Vohanka for alerting me to the article.)

Maitzen seems to be reasoning along the following lines. We can sensibly ask why there are apples, trees, plants, living things, and sensibly expect a natural-scientific answer. But we cannot sensibly ask why there are things (existents, beings, etc.). The same goes for the restricted question why there are any contingent beings. This is because 'contingent being' is just as much a dummy sortal as 'being.' Dummy sortals are referentially indeterminate unless replaced by a genuine sortal such as 'penguin.'

Maitzen's point could be put as follows. There are various sorts of thing, and of each sort we can sensibly ask: why are there things of this sort? But we cannot sensibly ask: why are there things at all, or contingent things at all? Things that are are not a sort of thing. And the same goes for things that are contingently.

So perhaps the point is simply this. 'Why is there anything at all?' is a pseudo-question because (a) things that are are not a sort of thing, and (b) we can sensibly ask the 'why' question only about sorts of things.

3. Tentative Evaluation

Well, I think it is perfectly clear that things that are are not a sort of thing. Aristotle said essentially that long ago when he said that being is not a genus (Metaph. 998b22, Anal Prior. 92b10). We could put the point in formal mode by saying that 'being,' ens, das Seiende, are not sortal expressions. (I am thinking of Heidegger's question, Warum ist das Seiende und nicht vielmehr nichts? ) But who ever said they were?

Maitzen's explanation of why people fall for the pseudo-question 'Why is there anything at all?' is because they confuse dummy sortals with genuine sortals. But it seems to me that we can avoid the confusion and still sensibly ask the question.

Consider the question, 'Does anything exist?' The question makes sense and has an obvious answer: 'Yes, things exist.' Both the question and the answer make sense despite the presence in them of the dummy sortal 'thing.' So why shouldn't it also make sense to ask why things exist?

Maitzen mistakenly assimilates the question 'Why does anything exist?' to the obviously senseless question 'How many things exist?' This is the central weakness of his paper. He never adequately explains the connection between the 'how many?' question and the 'why?' question. The former is senseless and precisely for the reason that 'thing' is not a sortal. But from the fact that 'thing' is not a sortal, how is it supposed to follow that the 'Why?' question is also senseless?