mctaggart’s theory of the self

8/12/2019 McTaggarts Theory of the Self

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MCTAGGART'S THEORY OF THE SELF

John Knox, Jr.

According to J. M. E. McTaggart, all that exists is spiritual, wherespirituality is defined as the quality of having content, all of which is thecontent of one or more selves (Sect. 381). In view of the importance whichhe thus assigns to selves, one properly expects of McTaggart a clear, certainly a consistent, account of what a self is. Yet the picture one receives remains clouded - clouded mainly by positions which may be contradictorywithin themselves, and by what plainly look to be incompatibilities of oneposition with another. In this paper, I shall try to clarify, and insofar spossible to support, McTaggart's doctrine. In part I shall be seeking todecide which ones, if any, of the seeming contradictions are genuinelyunresolvable. And then, in case no one consistent doctrine can be educed, Ishall ask which one of various alternative positions would be most in harmony with McTaggart's system as a whole.

There are two familiar theories of the self with each of whichMcTaggart's theory has some affinity. And even though McTaggart's is notidentical with either one, it may be helpful if I state these theories as Iunderstand them. For their very differences from the theory offered byMcTaggart will prove to be enlightening.The two theories which I have in mind are the pure ego theory on theone hand and the bundle theory on the other. The former is the view thata self is a continuous, nonphysical particular which stands in the relation ofhaving to a succession of more or less discontinuous experiences - wherethis relation of having is not, indeed is positively incompatible with, therelation of inclusion, or of whole to part. The second theory, the so-calledbundle theory, is in truth one or the other of two distinct accounts.On one of these the self is to be conceived as a set of experiences which is

unified by some unanalyzed, perhaps unanalyzable, relation. On this view,in saying that I have a headache, I assert that a headache is included in therelational whole which constitutes my self. Thus, the having of an ex-perience is the inclusion of the experience in the self which has it.

According to the bundle theory in its other version, selves are logicalconstructions. This means that the self is not an entity, which means inturn that one cannot meaningfully say, There exists an such that is a


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152 IDEALISTIC STUDIES

self. Equivalently, the word self' can be defined only contextually, or only in the process of one's replacing whole sentences which include this wordwith whole sentences which do not do so. Now the self is a constructionfrom experiences Thus, I have a headache is replaceable, on the presenttheory, by something on the order of, A headache is a member of thisseries of experiences. But I is not to be identified with the series of ex-periences. And the having is not to be viewed as a relation between myselfand the headache, or indeed as a relation at all.

But although there are thus two bundle theories, not just one, it seems tome to be enough in line with both to say that for the bundle theory, a selfsexperiences are parts of that self. For according to the logical constructiontheory, the ontological materials, so to speak, on the basis of which assertions may be made about selves, are various strings of experiences - thesame strings, in fact, which on the bundle theory of the simpler variety arethe selves to which, s particulars, the assertions refer. And so we may say, Ithink, somewhat loosely- but strictly enough for our purposes-that forthe bundle theory a selfs experiences are included in, or are the parts of,that self.

Certain passages in The Nature o Existence are such as to suggest thatMcTaggart has some leaning toward the pure ego theory of the self. For onething, the self is held to be a substance (Sect. 381). Now as McTaggartdefines it, a substance is something which has qualities and is relatedwithout being itself either a quality or a relation (Sect. 67).2 And so a self isnot, for McTaggart, a quality or a relation or (since a sum of qualities is, heholds, a quality, a sum of relations a relation) a sum of qualities or of relations. To be sure, the fact that McTaggart considers the self to be asubstance does not imply, what would be false, that he considers it a pureego. For in terms of McTaggart's definition of substance, a bundle of ex-periences - in fact, a mere sum of experiences - will itself be a substance. Sofar, then, we have no reason to say that for McTaggart the self is anythingelse than just such a bundle. And yet, in accepting the fact that the self is asubstance, and in defending, in Volume I, the existence of substance (chap.VI) McTaggart gives notice that he regards as unfounded one of the mostcommon objections to the pure ego theory: namely, that the concept of anysubstance or particular as something set over against (even if incapable ofexisting without) its qualities and relations is either vacuous or contradictory. And so, McTaggart agrees with the pure ego theorist at kast to the ex-tent of holding that a self is something distinct from its qualities and relations.

A further point of agreement is to be found in what McTaggart has to say


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MCTAGGART'S THEORY 53

about love. As McTaggart proposes to use the word, love is an intense andpassionate emotion which is felt toward persons, and only toward persons.Now love may be felt, says McTaggart, bec use of-Le. as an effectof-the qualities of its object. But it is never, he holds, felt in respect ofthose qualities (Sect. 465). And as is clear from the general discussion, andin particular from Sect. 468, love is not felt in respect of relations, any morethan it is of qualities. Now a respect is always a general character-which isto say, a quality or a relation. We must conclude, I think, that according toMcTaggart, love is felt in no respect at all. Rather, it is felt for a certain person simply as that person. t seems evident that no other person, not evenone (if such were possible) exactly similar, would be acceptable instead.Now there would seem, or at least at first sight there would seem, to besomething most irrational about this fact, were the person, or self, a bundleof experiences. For it may seem impossible to conceive of there being anydifference between one bundle of experiences and another qualitatively justlike it which might have existed in its place. One might claim, then, that ifthe passages about love are accepted, it follows that the person is, after all,a pure ego. For it may appear that nothing other than a pure ego could, withqualities and relations ruled out as that with respect to which love is felt,provide love with a specific object of concern in one person as distinguishedfrom another.

So some of McTaggart's views point toward, even if they do not entail,the pure ego theory of the self. But if McTaggart's thinking has, as plainly itdoes have, some affinity with the pure ego theory, it has also some affinity - indeed, as we shall now see, a stronger affinity - with the theorythat the self is a bundle.In the first place, one can wonder whether McTaggart's treatment of loveis altogether consistent with his main doctrine concerning substance and individuation. Thus McTaggart writes that substances are not things inthemselves, in the Hegelian sense of the phrase, with an individuality apartfrom their qualities. They are individual, but only through and by means oftheir qualities ... (Sect. 416; see also, and mainly, Sect. 95). But in thatcase, how is it that I can love a person as an individual, but not in respect ofhis qualities, if it is precisely by virtue of his qualities that the person is theindividual he is? t would seem that one or the other of two doctrines willhave to be modified: the doctrine about love on the one hand, or, on theother, the doctrine that individuality rests entirely on qualitative uniqueness. The question of which course McTaggart could take with leastsacrifice of consistency will be considered later on.Further, McTaggart holds explicitly that a selfs perceptions are parts of


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that self. In taking this position, McTaggart at once aligns himself with thebundle theory and decisively disowns the pure ego theory. According to thelatter, no experience, including a perception, which belongs to a given self ispart of that self. One might devise a modified pure ego theory, according towhich a self would be held to include, but at the same time to be more than,its experiences in their mutual relations. But with such a theory, too,McTaggart decisively dissociates himself. A selfs experiences - indeed aseWs perceptions - form, he holds, a complete set of parts of that self.What this means, technically, is that any part of a self which is not a perception must be either a part of a perception or a group of perceptions or a partof a group of perceptions. (For the concepts of a set of parts, of a group,and of a part of a group, see chap. XV.) Since a pure ego is none of thesethings, there is no room for a pure ego in the McTaggartian self.

In what way or ways, then, does McTaggart's view differ from the bundletheory? For one thing, on the theory of McTaggart the self is a particular.For him, therefore, the logical construction version of the bundle theory is aforeign country. Another difference is as follows. According to the bundletheorist, what unifies a self is a relation among its experiences. For McTaggart, on the other hand, the unifying factor is a quality - a simple, indefinable quality. As it is originally introduced, this unifying quality iscalled the quality of being a self (Sect. 382). At other places it is calledselfness. Although either form of reference seems appropriate, the earlierhas the advantage of making clear the vital point that as that quality whichunifies a self qu self, the quality of being a self belongs to a single selftaken as a whole. Now according to McTaggart, no self can have anotherself among its parts (Sects. 401-04). The quality of selfness does not,therefore, belong either to parts of selves or to groups of selves. So althoughMcTaggart is in agreement with the bundle theorist that the self has no content (Sect. 125) which is not the content of one or more experiences, he partscompany wit: the latter on the question of the seWs distinctive unity. Forthe bundle theorist, the source of unity is a relation among experiences. ForMcTaggart, the source of unity is a simple, indefinable quality of the selftaken as a whole.

With respect to its simplicity and indefinability, the quality of being a selfis compared by McTaggart to the quality of redness (Sect. 394). Now asMcTaggart conceives of it, selfness is indeed like redness in these tworespects. But whereas redness can belong to the parts of a red particular,and perhaps to a group of red particulars, selfness cannot belong to theparts of a self, or to a group of selves. With respect, then, to its inability tobe dispersed throughout a whole to which t belongs, or to belong to a par-


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ticular which includes such a whole, selfness is more akin to the complexquality of triangularity. (Even here, there is no perfect analogy. A group ofselves cannot compose a self. Yet a group of triangles may be arranged, atleast roughly, in the form of a triangle.)

McTaggart's theory differs significantly, then, from the theory that theself is a bundle. nd yet, with respect to the grounds on which he cutshimself off from that theory, McTaggart does not move even a step closerto a view of the self as a pure ego. For according to such a view, the elementwhich unifies a seWs experiences is not a quality any more than it is a rela-tion. t is, instead, a particular. No doubt a single pure ego has the qualityof being a pure ego; if it did not it would not e a pure ego. But according tothe pure ego theorist, the self as a pure ego does not derive either its unity orits individuality from the universal property of pure egohood. Instead, hewill say, it just has them; its unity and individuality are not derived at all. Infact the self will be held to be that Hegelian thing in itself which McTaggartrejects. McTaggart thus chooses to occupy a ground somewhere betweentwo theories which, materialistic theories aside, have frequently beenthought to exhaust the possibilities.

In a few moments we shall consider whether or not his position is consis-tent. But first, we should examine the case McTaggart makes for a doctrinewhich he shares wholeheartedly with the bundle theorist: the doctrine that aseWs experiences are parts of that self.

There are two views to be contrasted with McTaggart's. On one, there isno such thing as a perceptual state, but only a perceptual relation. This isthe only alternative which McTaggart recognizes. The other view, whichMcTaggart does not explicitly recognize as a possibility, is that there areperceptual states (or contents), and that these are experiences had by a selfbut not included in it. Since McTaggart does ignore the possibility of a viewof this sort, it would be no surprise should his arguments emerge as beingsomewhat less than convincing.In the first of his three arguments for the view that its perceptions areparts of a self (for all three of these arguments, see Sect. 412), McTaggarturges that a self, whose perceptions are, over a given period of time, morenumerous than are those of another, could appropriately be described,m e t a p h ~ r i c a l l y as being fuller. As a second part of the first argumentMcTaggart suggests we can see by contemplating them that our cogita-tions, volitions, and emotions do, taken together, in some sense exhaustthe self. (McTaggart holds that pleasures and pains, though feelings, arenot emotions. See Sect. 481. So evidently, to be consistent, McTaggartshould have said feelings, and not emotions. For certainly he holds that


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pleasures and pains, or what appear to be such in our present experience,are parts of the self.) But if the metaphor of fullness is appropriate, saysMcTaggart, and if its experiences do exhaust a self, then a self's experiencescan be no mere relations, but must instead be parts, indeed a complete set ofparts, of that self. This is the first argument in substance. But will either oneof McTaggart's two claims be granted? The pure ego theorist mighteasily-and in terms of his theory, very plausibly-maintain that what isfuller is the self's total experience or mental content, and that what onefinds to be exhausted is the self's total conscious field, or something of thatsort. That a conscious field is exhausted by the conscious experiences whichfill it is, it would seem, analytic, and hence a fact to be discovered otherwisethan through an act of contemplating those experiences. But the fact thatconscious cogitations, volitions, and emotions (or feelings) together exhaustone's conscious experiences is, if t is a fact at all, contingent and synthetic.This, then, may be regarded s the synthetic element in the pure egotheorist's claim, and not the fact that one's conscious experiences exhaustone's field of conscious experience.The second argument we are offered is that knowledge, including perception, makes a greater direct difference to the knower than it does to theknown - and that this fact can plausibly be accounted for only on the viewthat the knowledge is part of the knowing self. C. D. Broad, it seems to me,fails seriously to weaken the argument regarded as directed against purelyrelational theories of perceiving.3 For whereas Broad considers the greaterdifference which is in question to be a causal difference, and argues accordingly, the most noticeable actual difference, and the difference McTaggartsurely has in mind, is noncausal, or intrinsic. As McTaggart puts it, thedirect difference between B who knows C, and B if he did not know C, isgreater than the direct difference between C which is known by B and C ift had not been known to B. And it seems evident that the difference ofwhich McTaggart is thinking is precisely a difference between in a state ofknowing C and B otherwise than in a state of knowing C, and not a difference in any effects on B which his knowing of C might have. The real

weakness of McTaggart's argument consists in the ease with which t can beresponded to by the person who holds that knowledge is, besides a relation,a mental content owned by a self, which mental content is not, however, ap rt of that self. All such a person needs to say is that although a person'sknowledge of a certain object does make a greater direct intrinsic differenceto himself than it does to the object known, its doing so is to be explainedentirely by its being a state of his own mind, or a stage in his own mentalhistory.


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The third and final argument requires little discussion. According toMcTaggart, more philosophers would admit that pleasures and pains areparts of the self than would admit that perceptions or other cognitions aresuch. But in absolute reality, holds McTaggart, what we call pleasures andpains are pleasurable and painful perceptions (Sect. 426). Thus it follows,on McTaggart's view, that if pleasures and pains are parts of the self, thenso are certain cognitions, indeed certain perceptions. Plainly this argumentwill have no force for any person who does not agree with McTaggart thatpleasures and pains are parts of the self, or who does not share his view thatpleasures and pains are, in absolute reality, qualities of perceptions. Adefender of the position which we have been considering, according towhich pleasures and pains are not parts of the self, would rightly be unmoved by McTaggart's argument.

I think we may conclude that McTaggart has offered no convincing argument for the view that perceptions are parts of the self which has them, tosay nothing of the view that a selfs perceptions form a set of parts of thatself. f this is correct, then McTaggart has, just as surely, failed todemonstrate convincingly a pair of corresponding claims for a se s ex-periences in general. So even though McTaggart has himself rejected thepure ego theory, and could hardly be expected to embrace it as an alternative to his own, it is worth noting that his arguments are not, so far, sufficient to show that view to be mistaken. And now we may return to thataspect of McTaggart's theory in which it differs from the bundle theory noless than from the pure ego theory. I refer to the doctine that what defines asubstance as a self is its possession of a simple, indefinable quality ofselfness.My objection to this doctrine is that it faces an impossible dilemma. Theself which we are talking about is self - one thing of the sort we call aself. n what way might the oneness of the self be guaranteed? Perhapsjust by its being individual. Perhaps just by, in other words, its own particularity. Yet selfness is a universal; it is something which all selves possessin common. So selfness could not bring about the oneness of the selfthrough any contribution of particularity. f there is a way in which it couldhave this effect, this would have to be by its including a certain set ofboundary conditions or, if not, by its entailing (without including) such aset. (With McTaggart, I shall take for granted the soundness of the analyticsynthetic distinction.) Now those conditions which define a given sort ofwhole must be complex. And according to McTaggart, any substance,hence any self, is divisible, hence a whole. Now a simple quality cannot in- ludeany complexity. Certainly the simple quality of selfness does not do


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so. As McTaggart puts the matter, We can perceive no parts or elements ofwhich it is composed, any more than we can with the quality of redness.Like redness, it is simple and indefinable (Sect. 394). Selfness must,therefore, entail some complexity if it is to be, necessarily, a quality only ofa single self taken as a whole. But could a quality which was altogether simple possibly entail complexity of any kind, including the points at which asubstance of a certain species must begin and end?

But second, and what seems decisive, selfness, or the quality of being aself, is to define a single self. After all it must, therefore, include thosenecessarily complex conditions which separate one self from another, andwhich distinguish it from any of its parts. And that it should be able to dothis is, it seems, contradictory. How can a quality which is altogether simplespecify within itself a boundary or boundaries? Would not a quality whichdid do so have some complexity necessarily correspondent either to thenumerosity of the boundaries or to the organization or structure of theboundary, if there is only one? t should be noted that as McTaggartunderstands a complete defining quality, such a quality is not such that theboundaries of a defined particular might be specified by criteria conventionally associated with, but not included in, that quality. A merely conventional association would be regarded as inclusion. What McTaggart meansin calling selfness a simple quality is precisely that no multiplicity ofqualities or of relations is connected logically with this quality, apart fromwhat it might synthetically entail. I suggest, then, that where 1> is to namea kind of substance, or a kind of particular, the phrase the simple qualityof being a 1> turns out to be self-contradictory. Thus, the phrase the simple quality of being a self is contradictory, and McTaggart's theory of theself must be rejected.

e are faced, therefore, with the fact that McTaggart's views on thenature of the self do not compose a single, consistent theory. Instead, theyoffer us materials for one or the other of three different theories. One ofthese is the theory that the self is a pure ego. Now even though suggestionsof this view are to be found, we have seen, in McTaggart's thought, its acceptance by McTaggart would not be possible consistently with themetaphysical system set forth in The Nature o Existence According to theproponent of the pure ego theory, a se s perceptions are not to benumbered among its parts But if its perceptions are not parts of the self,then selves will not be primary parts of the universe, and will not be suchthat their parts of parts are related, to infinity, by Determining Correspondence via the relation of a perception to its object. And even thoughthis last relation would remain, presumably, a relation of Determining Cor-


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respondence, the self as a pure ego would fall outside any known system ofDetermining Correspondence, and thus would be saved from the Contradiction of Infinite Divisibility only by the d ho hypothesis that its parts weregoverned by some Determining Correspondence relation. (The principlethat every substance, including the self, is divisible, and infinitely divisible,is an essential element in the theory of Determining Correspondence, andthus in McTaggart's system.) For McTaggart, therefore, the cost of adopting the pure ego theory would be prohibitive.

t seems that either one of two remaining theories of the self would be abetter choice for McTaggart. First of all, there is the bundle theory, in eitherone of its two forms. There are a number of respects in which this theoryand McTaggart's are at odds. McTaggart differs fundamentally from bundle theorists in holding, as we have seen that he does, that a substance is aself by virtue of a simple quality - not of a relation among the parts ofwhich the substance is composed. Two further, derivative differences arethe following. First, McTaggart writes that if the bundle theory is true, wemust no longer say that the self perceives, thinks, or loves, or that it has aperception of thought or an emotion [sic]. We can only say that the bundleincludes a perception, a thought, or an emotion as one of its parts (Sect.388). But according to McTaggart, whereas a mental state s p rt of a self,we may also say that a self h s that state. And second, for the bundletheorists - McTaggart claims this, and I suggest that he is right - mentalstates are epistemologically and onto logically prior to the self; for the latteris, if t is anything, only an interrelated collection of those states. Accordingto McTaggart, on the other hand, the self as a whole is ontologically priorto the experiences which compose it (Sect. 253), and can perceive, and doesnot merely include, those experiences (Sect. 388, p. 71, footnote 1 . Theseare serious points of difference. On the whole, though, in adopting the bundle theory McTaggart would do less violence to the fundamentals of hissystem than he would in adopting the pure ego theory.The remaining alternative would be for McTaggart to agree with the bundle theorist that experiences are parts of the self which is said to havethem, but to agree with the pure ego theorist that boundaries betweenselves, together with the fact that various selves are the particular selves theyare - the fact of their individuality as selves - are determined by no qualityor relation or combination of qualities and relations, but are insteadultimate. The notion of an ultimate particularity, a particularity which isnot grounded in qualitative uniqueness, is of course mysterious, indeed insome sense unintelligible. But one is, after all, committed to such a notionin accepting the pure ego theory, or even in denying the principle of the


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identity of indiscernibles (or in McTaggart's phrase, the principle of theDissimilarity of the Diverse ). A view of the self such as that which I amproposing for consideration could be called a substance view; for selvesare to be distinguished from the totality of their qualities and from their

separate experiences, and furthermore are to possess an individuality apartfrom their qualities, in McTaggart's phrase. But it would not be the pureego theory. According to that theory, the self is the inner core which hasits experiences, but which does not include them. On the present view, theself s the experiences - but the experiences as parts of a whole whose unityand individuality are, as ultimate, not explicable in terms of the fact that thewhole possesses certain universal characteristics.

In accepting the third of the three theories I have mentioned, McTaggartwould, I admit, be forced to renounce the view that individuality rests onqualities, and to reject as unfounded both the principle of the Dissimilarityof the Diverse (Sect. 99), and, in turn, the principle that every particular entity must possess what McTaggart calls a sufficient description (Sect.102), i.e., a description which does not include a reference to any alreadyidentified particular, but which serves, nevertheless, to distinguish the givenparticular from every other particular. Now this last mentioned principlewould appear to be fundamental to McTaggart's system of metaphysics.For on it rests - or so t would seem - McTaggart's case for the previouslymentioned Contradiction of Infinite Divisibility, on which supposed contradiction rests, in turn, McTaggart's case for Determining Correspondenceas the one route of escape, for any substance or particular, from that contradiction. But, this principle might possibly turn out to be less integral toMcTaggart's system than it appears to be at first, and than McTaggartthought it was.And so I ask: does McTaggart's system depend in the vital way in which itseems to do on the principle that every substance, or particular, must have a

sufficient description? f the principle is indeed thus essential to his system,McTaggart will have no choice but to turn to the bundle theory, despite hiscondemnation of it. As a necessary preliminary to a decision on this matter,we shall have to examine McTaggart's argument, in chap. XXIII from theContradiction of Infinite Divisibility. For it is, I think, as a result of the apparent dependence of this argument on the principle in question that thesystem as a whole seems to depend on that principle. Now the argument ofSects. 182-91, in terms of presupposition and total ultimate presupposition, seems to me to be paralleled by, and in substance repeated by, themuch briefer and clearer argument of Sects. 192-94, which is in terms ofadequate descriptions and minimum adequate descriptions. It will suf-


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fice, then, if I present and discuss the latter argument and ignore theformer.By the principle of the Dissimilarity of the Diverse, we know that everyparticular possesses a sufficient description. We know, then, that the natureof any particular includes sufficient descriptions of all of that particular'sparts - even if, as McTaggart claims must be the case, the parts are infinitein number (Sects. 161-80). Thus, McTaggart writes: ... t is part of thenature of that it has a part with a description which sufficiently describesB and a part with a description which sufficiently describes C, and so onwith all the other parts .. (Sect. 192). We know without further ado,therefore, that the nature of a particular must necessitate at least by inclu-sion sufficient descriptions of all of that particular's parts. The questionthen arises whether or not some parts of this nature must betweenthemselves necessitate all of these descriptions, necessitating some of thesenot by inclusion, but by synthetic entailment.

With McTaggart, let us use the phrase adequate description to stand fora description which is full enough for a certain purpose, and the phraseminimum adequate description to stand for a description which is full

enough for a certain purpose, and which does not contain any superfluous. elements - elements which could be subtracted, leaving a description whichwould still be adequate to that same purpose. It seems evident that anydescription which was full enough for a certain purpose would have as apart of itself, or would itself be, at least one minimum adequate descriptionfor that purpose. (As McTaggart points out - Sect. 194 footnote a givenadequate description may include more than one minimum adequatedescription.) Consider, now, the purpose of providing a description of agiven particular A this description to include, or in some other way to provide, a sufficient description of each one of this particular's infinity ofparts. What would constitute a minimum adequate description for this particular purpose?

A minimum adequate description of could not include sufficientdescriptions of the members of any two sets of parts, M and N in the sameseries of subdivisions, where we may suppose that M is precedent to N.(That M is precedent to N or that N is sequent to M means that themembers of N are obtained by dividing, into two or more parts, one ormore of the members ofM and adding these parts to the members ofM leftundivided.) That a minimum adequate description of A could not includesuch descriptions of A s parts results from the fact that the sufficientdescriptions of the members ofN would entail sufficient descriptions of themembers of M as the members of a set some set precedent to N. Thus


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the various members of M would be sufficiently describable as particularshaving, or having parts having, such and such sufficient descriptions wherethe descriptions were of the various members ofN. Since sufficient descriptions of the members ofM would, in this way, be rendered superfluous bysufficient descriptions of the members of N the former would have to beomitted as one sought to achieve a minimum adequate description.

The minimum adequate description of A can include therefore, sufficient descriptions of the members of at most a single set of parts in a givenhierarchy of sets of parts. Now any set of parts will have an infinite numberof sets of parts which are sequent to it. So if P is a set of parts of (or isitself), descriptions of whose members are (or, the description of which is)included in a minimum adequate description ofA there will be an infiniteseries of sequent sets of parts, descriptions of whose members will be provided by, but not included in, the minimum adequate description ofA Nowin what way could this infinity of descriptions be provided, since they cannot be provided by inclusion? Evidently, only by synthetic entailment. So ifwe are to avoid a contradiction, then sequent to P there must be an infiniteseries of sets of parts, sufficient descriptions of the members of which aresynthetically entailed by, but are not included in, a certain description ofA.nd this is McTaggart's conclusion.Let us ask, now, if McTaggart's argument from the Contradiction of Infinite Divisibility, and in turn his argument for Determining Correspondence as the one route of escape from that supposed contradiction,rest in an essential way on the principle that every substance must have asufficient description. 4 For, the answer to this question is of central importance, we have seen, for a determination of what consistent theory of theself is least discordant with McTaggart's thought as a whole. I want to suggest very briefly that the answer to it is no.Suppose McTaggart's principle to be mistaken. f it is, we shall not be

able to say a priori that every particular will possess a description which iscompletely general, in the sense that it does not contain a reference to anyparticular merely as such, yet which is sufficient to distinguish a given particular from every other particular in the universe. But we shall be able tosay a priori- for the claim is analytic - that every particular will possess adescription which I shall term satisfactory : namely, a completely generaldescription which serves to distinguish a given particular from every otherparticular, except for any particular or particulars which may bequalitatively identical with the given particular. And now, I suggest that wecan state the argument from the Contradiction of Infinite Divisibility interms of satisfactory descriptions as easily as we can - as, of course,


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MCTAGGART S THEORY 63

McTaggart states it in terms of sufficient descriptions.What would constitute a minimum adequate description of A for the pur-pose of providing a description which will include, or in some other wayprovide, a satisfactory description of each one of A s infinitely many parts?

Such a description could not include satisfactory descriptions of themembers of any two sets of parts, M and N where Nwas sequent to M. Forsuppose that certain descriptions are full enough to distinguish each of themembers ofNfrom every other particular in the universe, except for any ex-actly resembling particulars. A given member of will consist of one ormore members of N. So if we have satisfactory descriptions of thosemembers of N which are involved, we shall be able adequately to describethe member of M as a particular consisting of particulars whose satisfactorydescriptions are such and such. t might be objected that satisfactorydescriptions of the parts would not ensure a satisfactory description of thewhole, since parts which were exactly similar might be arranged differentlyin two wholes, wholes which would not, therefore, be exactly similar to eachother. But if the parts were arranged differently in such a way as to producedissimilarity in their wholes, the relational qualities of the parts would notbe the same; thus the parts themselves would not, after all, be exactlysimilar qualitatively. I think it is evident, then, that a satisfactory descrip-tion of the member of is guaranteed by satisfactory descriptions of thismember s parts. Now the same reasoning will extend, of course, to all themembers ofM. Since the satisfactory descriptions of the members of Nthusrender superfluous the satisfactory descriptions of the members of M wesee that in the search for a minimum adequate description the latter will bedropped from any description of A which starts out by including descrip-tions of the members of both sets of parts.

t is thus apparent that a result will be required which is very similar tothat required before. There must be a chain of synthetic entailments run-ning from A or, if not, running from a set of parts P for every hierarchy ofsets of parts of A down through all the infinitely many sequent sets in eachhierarchy. What is different in the present case is that what are entailed willbe satisfactory descriptions as distinguished from sufficient ones. The pres-ent argument, which I suggest we could substitute for McTaggart s, will notdepend on our assuming the principle that every substance has a sufficientdescription. t is t least worth asking, then, whether there is anything inMcTaggart s system which requires that we assume that principle.Except for the fact that references to satisfactory descriptions would haveto replace references to sufficient descriptions, I cannot see that the systemdepends either for its a priori or for its semiempirical results on the necessity


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that every substance should have a sufficient description. t was held byMcTaggart that we needed Determining Correspondence, as originallydefined, in order to escape from the Contradiction of Infinite Divisibility.But we see, now, that we need something less: namely, an infinite series ofentailments merely of satisfactory descriptions, and not of sufficient ones.Now such a series is one in which descriptions of an infinity of parts withinparts are entailed by a certain description of a whole to which these partsbelong. Considerations of the same sort, then, as those which force us, ifevery particular must have a sufficient description, to Determining Correspondence as McTaggart defines it (Sect. 197) will, in case that principle isnot correct, force us to a modified Determining Correspondence entailingsatisfactory descriptions rather than sufficient ones.As a sample of McTaggart's semiempirical results, if McTaggart'sarguments for the impossibility of matter are valid as they stand, they willalso be valid if references to sufficient descriptions are replaced byreferences to satisfactory ones. For there will be the same difficulties aboutthe entailment of spatial and of nonspatial qualities down through an infinite series. Spirit, however, will be allowed entrance to reality. For therelation being a perception or' will still constitute - if it constitutes atall- a relation of (now modified) Determining Correspondence. An adequate description of B C in McTaggart's example in Sect. 410 would be, aperception by a self which is UVW of a self which is XYZ - where UVW'and XYZ are satisfactory descriptions. In connection with that example,the discussion of the five conditions for Determining Correspondencewould be unaffected, except that references in the first condition and in thefifth condition to sufficient descriptions would be replaced by references tosatisfactory descriptions.

So, although I cannot possibly undertake here to demonstrate the thesisrigorously or in detail, I do suggest that descriptions which were merelysatisfactory would suit McTaggart's purposes as effectively as would oneswhich were sufficient. f this is right, a crucial obstacle to McTaggart's accepting a theory of the self as a collection of experiences which though acollection, has an individuality apart from its qualities will have been overcome. (So, also, for that matter, will one obstacle to his accepting thetheory of the self as a pure ego.) With this otherwise important obstacleremoved, the theory that the self is a collection unified by sheer particularityis, I think, the theory, other than his own inconsistent one, which wouldleast disrupt McTaggart's system. The choice can be, we have seen, only between this theory and the bundle theory. And the latter stands in stubbornopposition to McTaggart's emphasis on the seWs unity and (as implied in his


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mctaggart’s theory of the self

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