Jeffrey Grupp
Jeffrey Grupp | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1971 (age 54–55) |
| Residence | West Lafayette, IN, United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Known for | Mereological nihilism; the mereological nihilist interpretation of quantum mechanics; blob theory |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of physics, Buddhist philosophy |
Jeffrey Grupp (born 1971) is an American philosopher who works in metaphysics, the philosophy of physics and Buddhist philosophy. He is best known as the originator of a mereological nihilist interpretation of quantum mechanics, set out at length in the journal Axiomathes in 2006, and for a body of work arguing that the standard metaphysical accounts of objects, properties and material constitution are internally incoherent. He is also the author of the paper on this wiki arguing that Adolf Grünbaum did not in fact solve Zeno's measure paradox. Grupp's philosophical position is a strongly heterodox one: he rejects composite objects, rejects n-adic properties, and treats much of contemporary analytic metaphysics as a subject in need of dismantling rather than extension.
Biography
Grupp took a BA in anthropology at the University of New Mexico and an MA in philosophy at Western Michigan University, and subsequently pursued doctoral study in philosophy at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. His published papers of the mid-2000s give his affiliation as the Philosophy Department, Purdue University.
He taught philosophy as a lecturer at the two Purdue campuses in northwest Indiana, Purdue University Calumet and Purdue University North Central. Those two campuses were unified in 2016 to form Purdue University Northwest; his teaching there predates that merger. No current academic appointment has been confirmed for this article.
Grupp is a former associate editor of the academic philosophy journal PHILO, during the period when Quentin Smith was its editor.
Philosophical work
Mereological nihilism
Mereological nihilism is the position that there are no items that have parts — that composite objects, in the ordinary sense, do not exist. If nothing has parts, then the only things that exist are partless fundamental simples: what Grupp calls true or philosophical atoms, entities of the sort posited by some ancient atomists and, on his reading, by some contemporary physicists and philosophers as well.
Grupp holds this view in an unusually strong form. On his account the tables, chairs, organisms and macroscopic bodies of everyday experience are not objects at all but arrangements of partless simples, and the widespread philosophical machinery built to explain how parts compose wholes is machinery built for a job that does not exist.
The mereological nihilist interpretation of quantum mechanics
In "Mereological nihilism: quantum atomism and the impossibility of material constitution" (Axiomathes, vol. 16, no. 3, 2006), Grupp argues that mereological nihilism is not merely a metaphysical option but the interpretation of quantum mechanics best supported by the empirical results. His claim is that quantum physics describes a world of partless quanta rather than a world of composed material bodies, and that theories of material constitution — accounts of how parts make up wholes, how properties attach to particulars, and how objects persist — cannot be given a coherent formulation.
Grupp further argues that this reading dissolves rather than answers the familiar quantum paradoxes. On his analysis those paradoxes are generated by the metaphysical assumptions imported into the interpretation of the theory, above all the assumption that there are composite material objects; remove that assumption and, he contends, the paradoxes do not arise. This is the position generally referred to as his mereological nihilist interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it is the work for which he is most often cited.
Related to it is his blob theory, argued in "Blob Theory: N-adic Properties Do Not Exist" (SORITES, no. 17, October 2006). There he argues that neither substance theory nor bundle theory can give a coherent account of how a particular possesses a property — the exemplification tie of the one and the compresence tie of the other both fail, he claims — and concludes that n-adic properties do not exist and that reality is fundamentally unstructured. The same line of attack appears in "The impossibility of an exemplification tie between particulars and universals" (Metaphysica, vol. 4, 2003) and "Compresence is a bundle: a problem for the bundle theory of objects" (Metaphysica, vol. 5, 2004).
Zeno's measure paradox and Grünbaum
Zeno's paradox of measure asks how an extended interval can be composed of unextended points: if each point has zero measure, no summation of them should yield a finite length. The standard modern response, associated in the philosophical literature with Adolf Grünbaum, appeals to the measure theory made available by Cantor's treatment of infinite sets.
In "Grünbaum Did Not Solve Zeno's Measure Paradox" (Proceedings of the NPA, vol. 3, no. 19, 2006, pp. 44–49) Grupp argues that this resolution does not succeed. Consistently with his wider atomism, he holds that the difficulty is not a technical one to be absorbed by measure theory but a symptom of an unworkable metaphysical picture of matter and space, one shared by physicists and philosophers alike; the paper also engages the particle-reality arguments of Victor Stenger. The paradox, on Grupp's view, remains open, and points toward a world of discrete partless simples rather than a continuum of points.
Buddhist philosophy
Grupp writes on Buddhist metaphysics and has published in the Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies. His interest in Buddhist thought is continuous with his analytic work: the Buddhist denial of substantial, enduring composite selves and objects runs parallel to the mereological nihilism he defends on independent grounds, and he has treated the two traditions as addressing the same questions about constitution, impermanence and the reality of ordinary objects.
Across these areas he has published roughly a dozen articles in academic philosophy journals, including Metaphysica, Axiomathes, Disputatio, SORITES and the Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies.
Political writing
Separately from his academic philosophy, Grupp has written on politics and corporate power. His book Corporatism: The Secret Government of the New World Order (Progressive Press, 2007; further edition 2008) argues that a network of corporate interests exercises hidden control over governments and international institutions. The Telescreen: An Empirical Study of the Destruction and Despiritualization of Consciousness (Progressive Press, 2009) argues that saturation by television, radio, advertising and other mass media — Grupp's application of the "telescreen" of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four — degrades human consciousness. These are Grupp's own contentions and are reported here as such; this wiki takes no position on them. He has also appeared as a guest on the Nutrimedical Report, a radio programme hosted by Bill Deagle.
Grupp has stated publicly that his political views are kept entirely out of his university teaching, saying that his political philosophy and his academic teaching never mix because universities would not regard his political positions as credible. His academic philosophical work has been described by Quentin Smith as original and rigorous.
Abstracts
Books
- The Telescreen: An Empirical Study of the Destruction and Despiritualization of Consciousness, Progressive Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-61577-075-5
- Corporatism: The Secret Government of the New World Order, Progressive Press, 2007 (further edition 2008). ISBN 978-0-930852-70-2