Ontological Collectivism

Given some things, what’s prior: those things taken individually or those things taken collectively? Is each of them prior to them, or are they prior to every one of them? Is each thing prior to the things, or are the things themselves prior to each thing itself? This is, at a very rough first pass, the general question at the heart of a neglected debate in foundational ontology, the debate over the relative ontological priority of individuality and collectivity. What’s prior, each of some entities or those very entities? Are some objects taken separately prior to those objects taken together, or are the objects taken together prior to the objects taken separately? Using a common piece of jargon: given some things, what’s prior, every single such thing or the plurality of them?1 The question ought not to be confused with others that have interested metaphysicians both across history and in more recent years. For instance, what’s at issue is not the relative priority of some entities and a further entity that’s somehow made out of those entities (a mereological fusion of them, a class or set of them, a fact or proposition about them, and so forth). That concerns the relative priority of some things (whether taken individually or collectively) and a somehow composite thing to which they bear some sort of intimate, constitutive relation (parthood, membership, etc.). The question is instead over the relative priority of each of some objects and those very objects—the focus is on individuality and collectivity proper, not on compositeness and componency. Similarly, the issue is not with the relative priority of some entities and a network of relations that those entities bear to one another. The concern there is with the relative priority of how some things are in isolation from each other and how they are in relation to each other. Our question is instead over how each of some objects is (whether in isolation from or in relation to others) and how those objects are—the focus is on singularity and plurality as such, not on isolation and relationality. Of *Many thanks to Ross Cameron, Michael Della Rocca, Heather Demarest, Cian Dorr, Nina Emery, Kit Fine, Rob Koons, Daniel Nolan, Laurie Paul, David Plunkett, Jonathan Schaffer, Erica Shumener, Gabriel Uzquiano, and Seth Yalcin for extensive feedback on previous versions of this material. 1Jargon: a plurality of things isn’t a further thing, which is somehow made out of those things. Rather, it’s just those things, the things themselves—those very things taken together, i.e. taken collectively.