Cheese Toast Ontologies
I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll mention it again: cheese is the best. In fact, it may be the G.O.A.T. 🐐. Imagine if Michael Jordan started a goat cheese business and called it G.O.A.T. Goat Cheese. Then he could market his cheese by advertising,
I’m Michael Jordan, the G.O.A.T., and I’m here to tell you about the best cheese, G.O.A.T. Goat Cheese…Take it from me, the G.O.A.T., G.O.A.T. Goat Cheese is the G.O.A.T.
I’d for sure buy that cheese.
All of which leads us to the main point: today is National Cheese Toast Day!
Cheese toast is just a piece of toast with melted cheese on it. But as such, it faces a real ontological problem. If you’ve never heard the word ’ontological’, there’s no need to worry. The study of ontology is simply a fancy way to talk about what exists and how it exists. And today we’ll discuss how the Principle of Ontological Parsimony relates to cheese toast.
Contemporary analytic philosophers are pretty finicky when it comes to stating principles. The formulations tend to include many capital letters—of either Roman or Greek origin—and many subscripts. We’ll try to keep it simple, after all we’re discussing parsimony. Our principle will be a curt imperative:
Don’t multiply entities beyond necessity!
Our little command isn’t much more than the ontological version of Ockham’s Razor. Ockham’s famed razor slices off fluff, reminding us to keep it simple.
So, what does this principle have to do with cheese toast?
Well, consider grilled cheese sandwiches. Is a grilled cheese sandwich merely two cheese toasts stuck together or is cheese toast just half of a grilled cheese sandwich?
Philosophers rush toward distinctions like moths to light bulbs. Let’s then make one more distinction. We can divide reality into simple objects and complex ones. Let’s call the former simples and the latter composites.
Simples can’t be divided further—they are the basic and primitive constituents of reality. Composites on the other hand are made up of other objects, either of simples or other composites. In the end, though, all composites reduce to simples.
With our distinctions in hand, let’s return to our question: cheese toast and grilled cheese, are they simples or composites? Of course, in our atom filled universe, both are composites. But let’s pretend that we live in a world of only cheese toasts and grilled cheese sandwiches and, moreover, that this world must contain simples (otherwise we’d face the abyss of an infinite ontological regress).
Which one’s the simple and which the composite (if indeed there are composites)?
Let’s think this through.
Were both cheese toasts and grilled cheese simples, then our reality would contain two types of things. Simple enough: in this world only two types of things exist and both are simples. There are no composites in this reality.
Next let’s assume that grilled cheese sandwiches are simples and cheese toasts composites. Well…that’s a bit odd. Cheese toasts are something less than grilled cheese sandwiches, namely half of a sandwich. But we can’t halve a simple. This line of thinking won’t do at all.
Now let’s posit that cheese toasts are simples and grilled cheese composites. Ah, that sounds right. While simples can’t be divided, they sure can be put together in certain arrangements—they can be composed. In this final scenario we have one simple and a composite.
It’s now time to apply our principle.
We can either have a world of two simples or one simple and a composite. All things being equal, which ontology ought we prefer? Well, according to our principle, we ought to prefer the one with only one type of simple, the world made up of cheese toasts. In this world, grilled cheese sandwiches reduce to cheese toasts.
We have then arrived at the answer to our original question: grilled cheese sandwiches are just two cheese toasts put together.
Did we learn anything of use today? I don’t know. What’s useful? But, if you enjoyed this thought exercise, it may be worth checking out the philosophical discipline of metaphysics. You might have some fun.
Happy National Cheese Toast Day!