Strawson Against Basic and Foundational Particulars

Strawson took a position on particulars that was directly in opposition to those of sense-data theorists and other such particularists or atomists. Strawson argued against many examples of what were taken to be basic particulars or foundations of some kind. For example, he took a position against private experiences (as in traditional empiricism) and epistemic particles. According to Strawson, none of them ‘filled the role of basic particulars’. His argument for this wholesale rejection of all these atomic and foundational particulars is simple. He argued that

none of them can be identified except by way of their unique relationship to a material object.

This means that we never identify or cognise such particulars, like, say, a sense-datum or sense-data, except when we bring along with them, as it were, the material objects we relate them to or which we take them to be made up of. In other words, we never in fact get the pure and untainted particulars they are taken to be. If they always bring their objects along with them, then they are not pure or basic at all. We cannot taken them as foundations either; or as examples of ‘the Given’. In a sense, if their material objects always come along with them, then it is material objects that are the genuine particulars because it will be them that we start off with in our reasonings and cognitions. This will also mean that, contrary to many philosophers, we do not ‘infer’ material objects from these particulars because they are there from the start. In addition, contrary to Quine we cannot posit something that has been there, in the mind, all along. Material objects and events are the real basics or fundamentals and perhaps also genuine particulars as well.

This is also the general position taken by Davidson in his rejection of relativistic conceptual schemes in the sense in which they are analogous to sense-data in that concepts and conceptual schemes are taken as things from which we interpret, categorise, posit and possibly infer the nature and existence of material objects and events. If material objects are always there, epistemically and in terms of mental cognitions, then conceptual schemes and their different natures and ontologies do not, in this context at least, make sense. It may follow that if conceptual schemes do not make sense for these reasons, then can’t we say the same of individual concepts themselves; or, more correctly, the supposed situation that two different concepts can be used in the same situation and even about the same object or aspect of an object? Again, we cannot even apply concepts as such if ‘their’ objects or extensions are there from the beginning. We cannot apply foundational concepts to material objects already seen as material; objects also seen as a kind of material object. We can change our concepts, sure, but only in the context of our realisation that ‘their’ material objects are always conceptually individuated from the start. We cognise what we take to be kinds of physical objects all along without any epistemic or cognitive gap (though there are ‘causal gaps’, as Davidson puts it).

In addition, Davidson rejects Quine’s notions of ‘sensory stimulations’ and ‘sense-events’ because they are somewhat analogous to sense-data. That is, Quine also takes them to be conceptually pure and from which we ‘posit’, rather than ‘infer’, the nature and existence of objects and kinds of material object. So Quine too deemed sensory stimulations or sense-events as basic particulars and also as foundational. Indeed Quine has written a lot about the relation of sensory stimulations to science; especially to observations, hypotheses, theories and posits. Just as was the case with sense-data theorists, or Carnap’s ‘cross-sections of experience’ and ‘protocol sentences’, these particulars, and Quine’s sensory stimulations, are seen as important to science in the sense that the natural sciences depend upon them and are therefore seen as foundational.

Strawson might have asked:

How can Quine’s sensory stimulations, and the other pseudo-particulars, be genuinely foundational if we never experience them in their pure form, or even experience them at all?

This is precisely because of the Strawson argument that they come along, from the beginning, with their material objects. Indeed if they come along with material objects, then it will be correct to deny their very existence as particulars. If we cognise material objects from the beginning, then we cannot also say that particulars ‘come along’ with material objects. If particulars come along with material objects, then they are not genuine particulars at all. Such particulars are taken to be particulars precisely because they don’t come along with material objects (or any thing else for that matter). We can neither say that material objects are the objects of – or made up of – particulars - or that they are the particulars of objects - because there is never an epistemic or cognitive gap between particulars and material objects. It makes no sense to see objects as particulars’ objects. They are not their objects because we neither infer nor posit objects and kinds of material objects or their very existence from particulars like sense-data, sense-events, or sensory stimulations.

If all these candidates for the role of particular are thereby rejected, then perhaps material objects, events and processes are the genuine particulars. However, we need not take these as particulars either, at least not particulars of the kind just rejected. Can material objects be taken as basic and fundamental; or as the basis  for inferences or posits of various kinds? Can they thereby be taken as foundational in some way? We can conclude from Strawson’s arguments that they must indeed be basic and fundamental in certain senses. In addition, we clearly can infer things from objects or groups of objects. They can be the means we use in order to posit further things not directly connected to them, like the existence of other objects or other kinds of objects. If all this is indeed the case, then it must follow that they can indeed be taken as foundations in some way. But only if we feel the need for foundations or foundational structures in the first place. Foundationalism, even with Strawsonian quasi-particulars, may still be suspect for various reasons. However, material objects could indeed be taken as the foundations of epistemic or cognitive reasonings. Likewise, the actual material objects themselves, rather than how we cognise and take them, could themselves be foundational in certain ways. However, according to certain holists, or coherentists, even Strawson’s own kind of particulars must be rejected along with the rest. Indeed they will not be deemed particular at all, let alone ‘genuine’ particulars. It would follow that if coherentists or holists reject their status as particulars because they do not think there are any particulars at all, then evidently they wouldn’t see them as possible or as actual foundations of any kind. But if Strawson’s physical objects are not particulars or individuals, then what are they? What did, for example, Bradley and Whitehead take material objects and kinds of objects to be?