This is a history post. So those of you with no interest in history of philosophy, or with no confidence in my abilities as a historian might want to skip to the next post.
In my Problem of the Many article in the Stanford Encyclopaedia I said that the problem could be traced to two sources: the third edition of Geach’s Reference and Generality and Unger’s article The Problem of the Many, both from 1980. I was somewhat surprised to learn when doing the research for this that the problem was not in earlier versions of Reference and Generality, so Geach doesn’t get a clear claim to priority over Unger. At the time I was fairly confident that these were the earliest versions of the problem. All the contemporary articles seemed to trace the problem back to Geach and/or Unger, and no one cited anything earlier than that. And I certainly hadn’t found anything earlier than 1980, though one wouldn’t want to rest too much weight on my historical acumen.
I think, though I haven’t checked this with the principals, that the problem was independently discovered by Unger and by Geach. In any case, I have no reason to suspect otherwise, and since both versions came out roundabout the same time and neither cites the other it seems reasonable to conclude that this was a process of simultaneous independent discovery.
I now think that there’s an earlier statement of the problem, in more or less its modern form. And I also think, contra what I said in the Stanford article, that the over-population solution to the Problem of the Many has been seriously defended. (Hud Hudson attributes this solution to David Lewis, but I think he’s being too charitable there.) Both conclusions derive from this passage from a article by Jaegwon Kim. The context is that Kim is trying to deflect the objection that his theory of events leads to too many events. His response is, roughly, that all sorts of plausible philosophical theories lead to implausible counting results.
The analogy with tables and other sundry physical objects may still help us here. We normally count this as one table; and there are just so many (a fixed number of) tables in this room. However, if you beleve in the calculus of individuals, you will see that included in this table ia another table – in fact, there are indefinitely many tables each of which is aprper part of this table. For consider the table with one micrometer of its top removed; that is a table difference from this table; and so on.
It would be absurd to say that for this reason we must say that there are in fact indefinitely many tables in this room. What I am suggesting is merely that the sense in which, under the structured complex view of events, there are indefinitely many strolls strolled by Sebastian may be just as harmless as the sense in which there are indefinitely many tables in this room.
I think that’s pretty much exactly the problem of the many. Note that despite the talk of ‘removing’ one micrometer of the top of the table, the reference to the calculus of individuals makes it clear that Kim just cares about what objects are here now, not what objects could be here. What he’s assuming, falsely I now think, is that table is an intrinsic property so the fact that if we did shave off a micrometer we’d clearly have still a table means that the mereological difference between the table now and the bits of wood that would, in that case, be so shaved is also a table. And he’s inferring, I think, that since it would be absurd to give up our ordinary practice of talking as if there’s exactly one table here because of these metaphysical speculations, there must be some pragmatic mechanism that makes this talk acceptable. Note in this context the exact wording of the first sentence of the second quoted paragraph. He doesn’t say that this is an absurd reason to think there are indefinitely many tables here. It is really, but he thinks it’s actually quite a good reason. He thinks it is an absurd reason to say that there are indefinitely many tables here. Presumably pragmatics must be doing a fair bit of work to bridge the gap between truth and assertion.
Kim’s paper Events as Property Abstractions was first published in Action Theory, edited by Myles Brand and Douglas Walton, Reidel 1976, pp 159-77. That volume was a collection of papers presented at the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action, held at Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 9-11 May 1975. The quote is from page 172. (I think – I’m writing this from notes which are a little hazy.) So I think it’s a pretty clear claim to priority. I still think Geach and Unger independently discovered the problem, but I now think they independently rediscovered it, rather than being simultaneous initial discoverers.
Unless I find good reason to change my mind on that, I’ll alter the Stanford entry to credit Kim with the initial discovery.