Counting the Holes

Abstract Argle claimed that holes supervene on their material hosts, and that every truth about holes boils down to a truth about perforated things. This may well be right, assuming holes are perforations. But we still need an explicit theory of holes to do justice to the ordinary way of counting holes-or so says Cargle. Concerning holes. Argle claimed that holes supervene on their material hosts, and that every truth about holes boils down to a truth about perforated things. This may well be right, assuming holes are perforations. (I suppose a similar theory can be worked out to account for our discourse about cuts, indentations, fissures, inner cavities, nooks, and the like.) But we still need an explicit theory of holes to do justice to the ordinary way of counting holes. Now there is one hole. But this is not to say that you have created an immaterial entity that should now be added to the inventory of the world. We can truly say that there is one hole in the card insofar as it is true that the card has been perforated, and everything we say about that hole can be paraphrased in terms of statements about this singly perforated card. If that is what Argle said, he was right. And don’t tell me now that paraphrases can be hard to find, misleading, unnatural, or what have you-that is an empty can of worms. Nobody ever claimed that linguistic revision is easy.