Notes on Holes

Author

David Sanson

Published

December 3, 2013

Terminology and Taxonomy (see Casati and Varzi 1994)

A hole is in a host and filled by a guest. There are at least three kinds of holes:

Cavities
no entrance from outside
Hollows
one entrance from outside
Tunnels
two or more entrances from outside

Examples:

  • the cream-filled hole inside a Twinkie
  • the hole in a bead
  • the hole inside a tennis ball
  • the holes in a Wiffle Ball

Some Apparent Features of Holes

  • holes are located in space and time
  • holes can move
  • holes are always in something else and cannot exist in isolation
  • holes can be filled without being destroyed

An Argument for Dualism

  1. There are holes.
  2. Holes are immaterial objects.
  3. So, there are immaterial objects.

Arguments for the Existence of Holes

The Swiss Cheese Argument

  1. There is swiss cheese.
  2. Swiss cheese has holes.
  3. There are holes.

The Argument from Perception

  1. People see holes.
  2. You can’t see something that doesn’t exist.
  3. So, holes exist.

The Argument from Causation

Yea! My bucket’s got a hole in it, Yea! My bucket’s got a hole in it, Yea! My bucket’s got a hole in it, I can’t buy no beer.

Views About Holes

Realism
There are holes.
Naive Realism
Holes are sui generis1 spatiotemporally-located immaterial movable fillable objects.
Holes as Material Objects
There are holes. Holes are material objects.
Holes as Extraordinary Material Objects
Holes are made of matter that fills space differently than ordinary matter.
Holes as Ordinary Material Objects
A hole is identical to a part of its host, e.g., the hole-surround.
Anti-Realism
There are no holes.
Hole-talk without Holes
There are no holes, only holy objects.
‘There is a hole in this donut’ is a sloppy way of saying ‘This donut is holy’.

Further Reading

Casati, Roberto, and Achille Varzi. 2009. “Holes.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2009. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/holes/.
Casati, Roberto, and Achille C Varzi. 1994. Holes and Other Superficialities. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Sorensen, Roy A. 2008. Seeing dark things: the philosophy of shadows. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wake, Andrew, Joshua Spencer, and Gregory Fowler. 2007. “Holes as Regions of Spacetime.” The Monist 90 (3): 372–78.

Footnotes

  1. Fancy Latin for “of its own kind”.↩︎