What if you adjusted the definition to explain that a hole is the absence of the material it is bounded by? A hole in the earth is the absence of earth, specifically, and a tunnel through a stone is a segment where stone, specifically, is not there.
But in that case, a pot or a cup or a glass or a thimble would have a hole in it.
Holes are a highly conventional kind. If the question is which nouns pick out things that are in some sense “natural kinds” that “carve the world at its joints,” holes won’t pass muster. But of course if someone says that there are holes, only a certain sort of philosophical fusspot would disagree.
And on Jimmy’s question of whether talk of holes is playing pretend, my instinct is that the word “pretend” would be misleading. We’re (partly) going along with a tacit linguistic practice, but the practice lets us say useful things about the world.
Think about a mug with me - it has a cavity to hold liquid, and a perforation to put your fingers through. Topologically, only the handle is a true hole. But deforming the shape to remove its cavity would remove its utility as a vessel. Pots, cups, thimbles - if you perforate them, they become tubes, and if you deform them to remove their concavity, they become plates.
What if you adjusted the definition to explain that a hole is the absence of the material it is bounded by? A hole in the earth is the absence of earth, specifically, and a tunnel through a stone is a segment where stone, specifically, is not there.
But in that case, a pot or a cup or a glass or a thimble would have a hole in it.
Holes are a highly conventional kind. If the question is which nouns pick out things that are in some sense “natural kinds” that “carve the world at its joints,” holes won’t pass muster. But of course if someone says that there are holes, only a certain sort of philosophical fusspot would disagree.
And on Jimmy’s question of whether talk of holes is playing pretend, my instinct is that the word “pretend” would be misleading. We’re (partly) going along with a tacit linguistic practice, but the practice lets us say useful things about the world.
Think about a mug with me - it has a cavity to hold liquid, and a perforation to put your fingers through. Topologically, only the handle is a true hole. But deforming the shape to remove its cavity would remove its utility as a vessel. Pots, cups, thimbles - if you perforate them, they become tubes, and if you deform them to remove their concavity, they become plates.