I have a briar pipe like the one you describe, with two gross proper parts. I also have a clay pipe which is all of a piece. Is the latter more of a whole than the former? Do I have three things, a bowl, a stem, and a pipe? Or four, a bowl, a stem, a pipe, and another pipe? No, I have two pipes. The wholeness of either pipe seems to be essentially unaffected by the way its parts are joined. Either that, or the constituent parts of the clay pipe don’t form any more of a whole than the briar one, which means that neither pipes nor wood nor clay nor molecules nor atoms exist but only some ultimate prime matter about which we know nothing. This seems absurd and unacceptable when I can choose the first option.

I might say that the puzzle as constructed ignores the difference between potentiality and actuality. It begins by having already mentally analyzed what is into its constituent parts, when what really exists is the actual whole. In thinking “bowl+stem” I have already mentally eliminated the pipe. (I would say that I don’t see the forest for the trees, but the forest isn’t really much of a whole.) But if the pipe was actually “analyzed” into its parts, i.e. if the bowl and stem existed as separate things, the pipe already wouldn’t exist. Aquinas would go so far as to say that in substantial unities (the pipe as an artifact wouldn’t qualify) the parts actually disappear into the reality of the whole and do not have real existence—only potential existence—until they are separated again. Not being a Thomist, this seems extreme to me and I wouldn’t go so far. But I do think that only a metaphysical attitude which takes the whole as primary and the parts as secondary, rather than the other way around, can get out of puzzles like this, to explain e.g. why I am self-identical even if I have none of constituent parts (individual cells etc.) I did as an infant.

Ignoring the distinction between potentiality and actuality introduces, it seems to me, an equivocation or at least an ambiguity into words like “entity” and “thing” which need to be cleared up. The pipe is not three things, but one thing, as long as it’s an actual pipe and not divided into its parts. Rather than wondering whether I am anything besides my organs, it makes far more sense to wonder whether my organs are anything besides me! I can exist without my hand, but my hand can’t exist qua hand without me. I as the composite whole give reality and thinghood to my organs; the sum of my organs does not give thinghood to me.

All these points are lost if I think of parts as the primary things and then wonder how the whole fits in. “So if n parts exist and the whole exists, then (at least) n + 1 things exist.” This seems fundamentally wrongheaded to me, because it improperly takes “thing” to have a univocal sense between matter and form, and to apply per se to each of them. But Aristotle says that in one way substance is the matter, in another and separate way substance is the form; but most correctly and properly substance is the composite. This seems right to me.

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Anyone interested in the whole discussion should take a look at recent posts on Maverick Philosopher.

One of the reasons I enjoy discussions like this is that they allow me to get out of my own philosophical neighborhood. When discussing philosophy with other people who are used to 13th-century metaphysics we tend to take principles and definitions for granted, and arguments sometimes become about minutia rather than about fundamental issues. Discussions with sharp thinkers unused to my own tradition, such as analytic types like Dr Vallicella, gives me the opportunity to see problems in new lights, to learn new kinds of arguments or objections, and to refine my own opinions. Dr Vallicella is a retired professor living in Arizona, but he’s taught me more than some people I’ve actually taken courses from. Hooray for the internet.