In this paper, I explore various views on which mind-body dualism is true, but the soul is located in the body. I argue that this sort of dualism (which I call 'somatic dualism') once was a not-uncommon view in the philosophy of mind. I also argue that it has the resources to reply to some of the problems thought to affect Cartesian dualism.

On Anselmian theism, God is, amongst other things, a necessary being. On genuine modal realism, possible worlds are maximal mereological sums of spatiotemporally connected individuals. I argue in this paper that AT and GMR are either incompatible or their conjunction leads to—amongst other things—modal collapse. Specifically, I argue: regardless of whether God is concrete or abstract, His necessary existence either is inconsistent with AT-GMR or it leads to, amongst other things, modal collapse for AT-GMR. I conclude the paper by contending (...) that, if I am correct, the ATist will have an argument against the truth of GMR, and the GMRist will have an argument against the truth of AT. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of studies by Romanian philosophers, addressing foundational issues currently debated in contemporary philosophy of science. It offers a historical survey of the tradition of scientific philosophy in Romania. It examines some problems in the foundations of logic, mathematics, linguistics, the natural and social sciences. Among the more specific topics, it discusses scientific explanation, models, and mechanisms, as well as memory, artifacts, and rules of research. The book is useful to those interested in the philosophy of (...) real science, but also to those interested in Romanian philosophy. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism is the view that no objects have proper parts. Despite how counter‐intuitive it is, it is taken quite seriously, largely because it solves a number of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects – or so its proponents claim. In this article, I show that for every puzzle that mereological nihilism solves, there is a similar puzzle that (a) it doesn’t solve, and (b) every other solution to the original puzzle does solve. Since the solutions to the new (...) puzzles apply just as well to the old puzzles, the old puzzles provide no motivation to be a mereological nihilist. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic account of the metaphysically important distinction between haecceitistic properties, such as being David Lewis or being acquainted with David Lewis, and qualitative properties, such as being red or being acquainted with a famous philosopher. I first argue that this distinction is hyperintensional, that is, that cointensional properties can differ in whether they are qualitative. Then I develop an analysis of the qualitative/haecceitistic distinction according to which haecceitistic properties are relational in (...) a certain sense. I argue that this analysis can capture the hyperintensionality of the qualitative/haecceitistic distinction and is generally in accordance with the use of the notion of a qualitative property in philosophical debates. (shrink)

Objects partially resemble when they are alike in some way but not entirely alike. Partial resemblance, then, involves similarity in a respect. It has been observed that talk of “respects” appears to be thinly‐veiled talk of properties. So some theorists take similarity in a respect to require property realism. I will go a step further and argue that similarity in intrinsic respects (partial intrinsic resemblance) requires properties to be immanent in objects. For a property to be immanent in an object (...) is roughly for it to be wholly present in that object. (So understood, immanence does not imply repeatability, and thus tropes count as immanent.) If two objects are intrinsically similar in one way but not another, there must be a difference between the two ways. And if the similarity is between the objects as they are in themselves, then this difference, too, must be within the objects. Partial intrinsic resemblance thus requires internal structure. Without it, there can be no distinctions between ways in which things are intrinsically alike and ways in which they aren't. I will argue, further, that distinctions between properties that transcend objects fail to account for the possibility of partial intrinsic resemblance. (shrink)

La physique contemporaine pourrait bien nous livrer un enseignement incroyable, à savoir que l'espace et le temps n'existent pas fondamentalement. Je présenterai succinctement les ontologies suggérées par les deux principaux programmes de recherche en gravité quantique : la théorie des cordes et la gravité quantique à boucles. Je soutiendrai ensuite qu'il est fructueux de prendre les différentes conceptions ontologiques de la conscience en philosophie de l'esprit en modèles pour la construction de solutions au problème de l'émergence de l'espace-temps.

I argue that the extended simples picture (ESP) is compatible with supersubstantivalism under the quantum holism model, and that reevaluating our limits on the ways an object may be located by fusing the two ontologies can benefit our understanding of modern physics. I first illustrate the explanatory utility of extended simples, using examples of superposition and entanglement. Second, I advocate the use of supersubstantivalism as a way to understand the interface between objects and spacetime, and argue that the ESP suitably (...) fits into a supersubstantivalist interpretation of quantum field theory. In the last section, I propose quantum holism as a framework to reconcile supersubstantivalism with extended simples, and conclude that the causal relationship that interweaves material objects and spacetime render the two ontologies compatible. I will demonstrate that a combined ontology is useful for its parsimony, and for our understanding of quantum field theory. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is the theory that objects are composites of form and matter. Recently it has been argued that form is structure, or the arrangement of an object's parts. This paper shows that the principle of form cannot be ontologically exhausted by structure. That is, I deny form should be understood just as the arrangement of an object's parts. I do so by showing that structure cannot play the role form is supposed to in a certain domain of objects, specifically, in (...) mereological simples. Thus, I show that Hylomorphism does not reduce to Structuralism. I also draw out some important consequences from my argument for Hylomorphism in general. (shrink)

In this paper, I will offer an analogy between the Trinity and extended simples that supports a Latin approach to the Trinity. The theoretical tools developed to discuss and debate extended simples in the literature of contemporary analytic metaphysics, I argue, can help us make useful conceptual distinctions in attempts to understand what it could be for God to be Triune. Furthermore, the analogy between extended simples and the Trinity might surprise some who find one of these at least plausibly (...) possible and the other incoherent. (shrink)

Extended simples are fruitfully discussed in metaphysics. They are entities which are located in a complex region of space but do not themselves have parts. In this paper, I will discuss unextended complexes: entities which are not located at a complex region of space but do themselves have parts. In particular, I focus on one type of unextended complex: pointy complexes. Four areas are indicated where pointy complexes might prove philosophically useful. Unextended complexes are therefore philosophically fruitful, in much the (...) same way as extended simples. (shrink)

We have some of our properties purely in virtue of the way we are. (Our mass is an example.) We have other properties in virtue of the way we interact with the world. (Our weight is an example.) The former are the intrinsic properties, the latter are the extrinsic properties. This seems to be an intuitive enough distinction to grasp, and hence the intuitive distinction has made its way into many discussions in philosophy, including discussions in ethics, philosophy of mind, (...) metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of physics. Unfortunately, when we look more closely at the intuitive distinction, we find reason to suspect that it conflates a few related distinctions, and that each of these distinctions is somewhat resistant to analysis. (shrink)

Attributions of omnipresence, most familiar within the philosophy of religion, typically take the omnipresence of an entity to either consist in that entity's occupation of certain regions or be dependent upon other of that entity's attributes, such as omnipotence or omniscience. This paper defends an alternative conception of omnipresence that is independent of other purported divine attributes and dispenses with occupation. The resulting view repurposes the metaphysics of necessitism and permanentism, taking omnipresent entities to be those entities that exist at (...) all regions. This view is then shown to best accommodate attributions of omnipresence to a diverse range of metaphysical posits, like abstract entities, and a more diverse class of religious posits. (shrink)

This article discusses two arguments in favor of perdurance. The first is Sider’s argument from vagueness, “one of the most powerful” in favor of perdurantism. I make the observation that endurantists have principled grounds to claim that the argument is unsound, at least if endurance is formulated in locative rather than mereological terms. Having made this observation, I use it to emphasize a somewhat neglected difference between endurantists and perdurantists with respect to their views on material objects. These views, in (...) the case of endurantists, lead to a further, less than conclusive but nevertheless interesting argument against endurantism—the anti-fundamentality argument—which I discuss and tentatively endorse. That argument posits that endurantists must take location to be a fundamental relation, and that this has as a consequence the metaphysical possibility of some rather unwelcome scenarios. Perdurantists may avoid this consequence by denying that location is fundamental, perhaps by embracing supersubstantivalism. (shrink)

The notion of multiple location plays an important role in the characterization of endurantism. Several authors have recently offered cases intended to demonstrate the incoherence of multiple location. I argue that these cases do not succeed in making multiple location problematic. Along the way, several crucial issues about multiple location and its use by endurantists are clarified.

The issues I explore in this paper are best introduced by the table with which it begins. The left-hand entry in each row gives expression to a kind objectivity; the right-hand entry affirms the existence of a special kind of object. When philosophers believe in any of the entities on the right, it is typically because they think them necessary to ground the facts on the left. By the same token, when philosophers deny any of the facts on the left, (...) it is often because they cannot bring themselves to believe in the associated kind of object on the right. My project is to explore the extent to which it is possible to have the objectivity without the objects—for example, absolute motion without substantival space, objective predication without universals, objective synonymy without propositions, and objective modality without possible worlds. Each of these combinations would have been congenial to A.N. Prior. (shrink)

Recently, we have been presented with an argument against the intrinsicality of shape that appeals to a plausible Humean principle. According to the argument, if shape is intrinsic and the location relation is fundamental, then we cannot explain the necessary correlation between an object’s shape and the shape of its location. And, it is claimed, the Humean principle tells us that an unexplained necessary correlation like this one is unacceptable. In this paper I respond to this argument by rejecting the (...) favoured interpretation of the Humean principle. I claim that sometimes there are truths about what it means to stand in a given relation, even when that relation has no analysis.. These truths sometimes entail that the relata of the relation have certain features. And it is not problematic for truths about what it means to stand in a relation to be unexplained. I argue that it is plausible to take is located at to be such a relation; an object’s having exactly the same shape as the region it is located at is part of what it means to be located at that region. I conclude with an amended formulation of the Humean claim that still captures the spirit of the principle without threatening the intrinsicality of shape. (shrink)

Let an X/Y distinction be a distinction between kinds of properties, such as the distinctions between qualitative and non-qualitative, intrinsic and extrinsic, perfectly natural and less-than-perfectly natural or dispositional and categorical properties. An X/Y distinction is hyperintensional iff there are cointensional properties P and Q, such that P is an X-property, whereas Q is a Y-property. Many accounts of metaphysical distinctions among properties presuppose that such distinctions are non-hyperintensional. In this paper, I call this presupposition into question. I develop a (...) sufficient condition for the hyperintensionality of X/Y distinctions and argue that this condition is satisfied by a number of standard classifications of properties. It follows that non-hyperintensional analyses of distinctions among properties are harder to defend than is often assumed. (shrink)

This paper discusses how the possibility of multi-located entities can resolve problems both with the Trinity and with the existence of souls.

I first offer a broad taxonomy of models of divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition, both past and present. I then examine the recent model proposed by Hud Hudson (2009, 2014) and Alexander Pruss (2013)—ubiquitous entension—and flag a worry with their account that stems from predominant analyses of the concept of ‘material object’. I then attempt to show that ubiquitous entension has a rich Latin medieval precedent in the work of Augusine and Anselm. I argue that the model of omnipresence (...) explicated by Augustine and Anselm has the resources to avoid the noted worry by offering an alternative account of the divide between the immaterial and the material. I conclude by considering a few alternative analyses of ‘material object’ that make conceptual room for a contemporary Christian theist to follow suite in thinking that at least some immaterial entities are literally spatially located when relating to the denizens of spacetime. (shrink)

Seventeenth century scholastics had a rich debate about the ontological status and nature of lacks, negations, and privations. Realists in this debate posit irreducible negative entities responsible for the non-existence of positive entities. One of the first scholastics to develop a realist position on negative entities was Thomas Compton Carleton. In this paper I explain Carleton's theory of negative entities, including what it is for something to be negative, how negative entities are individuated, whether they are abstract or concrete, and (...) how they affect their subjects. I argue that for Carleton, negative entities are conceived as spatially extended simples that affect their subjects by means of spatial overlap. I also show how Carleton responds to some theological worries about his realism concerning negative entities. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that the past must be finite in duration because otherwise reaching the present moment would have involved something impossible, namely, the sequential occurrence of an actual infinity of events. In reply, some philosophers have objected that there can be nothing amiss in such an occurrence, since actually infinite sequences are ‘traversed’ all the time in nature, for example, whenever an object moves from one location in space to another. This essay focuses on one of the two (...) available replies to this objection, namely, the claim that actual infinities are not traversed in nature because space, time, and other continuous wholes divide into parts only in so far as we divide them in thought, and thus divide into only a finite number of parts. I grant that this reply succeeds in blunting the anti-finitist objection, but I argue that it also subverts the very argument against an eternal past that it was intended to save. (shrink)

An introduction to the theories of endurantism and perdurantism, and persistence more broadly.

Until recently, an almost perfect parallelism seemed to hold between theories of identity through time and across possible worlds,as every account in the temporal case(endurantism,perdurantism, exdurantism) was mirrored by a twin account in the modal case (trans-world identity, identity-via-parts, identity-via-counterparts). Nevertheless, in the recent literature, this parallelism has been broken because of the implementation in the debate of the relation of location. In particular, endurantism has been subject to a more in-depth analysis, and different versions of it, corresponding to different (...) ways an entity can be located in time, emerged. In this article, we provide a precise map of the conceptions at stake, complete the debate by introducing a version of endurantism not yet considered in the debate — we call transcendentism — and show that it allows us to provide an effective interpretation of the relation of trans-world identity and an intuitive solution in the temporal case. (shrink)

Endurantists have recently faced a mereological puzzle in various forms. Here I argue that, instead of presenting a genuine worry, the puzzle actually reveals a common misunderstanding about the endurantist ontology. Furthermore, through this discussion of the alleged problem and the misunderstanding which motivates it, I reveal metaphysical commitments the endurantist has that may not be widely recognized. For instance, she is committed to interesting and perhaps controversial views about shape and location. I highlight these commitments and what they mean (...) for the endurantist. (shrink)

Mereological challenges have recently been raised against the endurantist. For instance, Barker and Dowe (2003) have argued that eternalist endurantism entails (1) persisting objects are both 3D and 4D, and that (2) the lives of persisting objects last longer than they actually do. They also argue that presentist endurantism also entails, albeit in a tensed way, that (3) the lives of persisting objects last longer than they actually do. While they’ve further argued (2005) that the objections raised by McDaniel (2003) (...) and Beebee and Rush (2003) fail, here I show that such objections are tenable without requiring further significant metaphysical commitments; I argue that such endurantist defences are tenable, contra to prior analyses. (shrink)

Counterpossibles are counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The problem of counterpossibles is easiest to state within the "nearest possible world" framework for counterfactuals: on this approach, a counterfactual is true (roughly) when the consequent is true in the "nearest" possible world where the antecedent is true. Since counterpossibles have necessarily false antecedents, there is no possible world where the antecedent is true. On the approach favored by Lewis, Stalnaker, Williamson, and others, counterpossibles are all trivially true. I introduce several arguments (...) against the trivial approach. First, it is counter-intuitive to think that all counterpossibles are true. Second, if all counterpossibles were true, then we could not make sense of their use in logical, philosophical, or mathematical arguments. Making sense of the role of sentences like these requires that they not have vacuous truth conditions. The account of counterpossibles I ultimately favor is an extension of the "nearest possible world" semantics discussed above. The Lewis/Stalnaker account is supplemented with the addition of impossible worlds, and the nearness metric is extended to range over these impossible worlds as well as possible worlds. Thus, a counterfactual is true when its consequent is true in the nearest world where the antecedent is true; if the counterfactual's antecedent is impossible, then the nearest world in question will be an impossible world. Once the framework of impossible worlds and similarity is in place, we can put it to use in the analysis of other philosophical phenomena. I examine one proposal that makes use of a theory of counterpossibles to develop an analysis of the notion of metaphysical dependence. (shrink)

Deferential Monadic Panpsychism is a view that accepts that physical science is capable of discovering the basic structure of reality. However, it denies that reality is fully and exhaustively de- scribed purely in terms of physical science. Consciousness is missing from the physical description and cannot be reduced to it. DMP explores the idea that the physically fundamental features of the world possess some intrinsic mental aspect. It thereby faces a se- vere problem of understanding how more complex mental states (...) emerge from the mental features of the fundamental features. Here I explore the idea that a new form of aggregative emergence, which I call 'combinatorial infusion', could shed light on this problem and bolster the prospects for this form of panpsychism. (shrink)

An encyclopedia entry which covers various revisionary conceptions of which macroscopic objects there are, and the puzzles and arguments that motivate these conceptions: sorites arguments, the argument from vagueness, the puzzles of material constitution, arguments against indeterminate identity, arguments from arbitrariness, debunking arguments, the overdetermination argument, and the problem of the many.

Suppose that a material object is gunky: all of its parts are located in space, and each of its parts has a proper part. Does it follow from this hypothesis that the space in which that object resides must itself be gunky? I argue that it does not. There is room for gunky objects in a space that decomposes without remainder into mereological simples.

Philosophical questions concerning parts and wholes have received a tremendous amount of the attention of contemporary analytic metaphysicians. In what follows, I discuss some of the central questions. The questions to be discussed are: how general is parthood? Are there different kinds of parthood or ways to be a part? Can two things be composed of the same parts? When does composition occur? Can material objects gain or lose parts? What is the logical form of the parthood relation enjoyed by (...) material objects? (shrink)

Philosophy of science appears caught in what Einstein (1933) called the ‘eternal antithesis between the two inseparable components of our knowledge – the empirical and the rational’ (p. 271). It wants to employ metaphysical speculation, but impressed with the methods of the subject it studies, it fears overreaching. Philosophy of science thus tries to walk a fine line between scientifically grounded metaphysics and its more speculative cousins. Here I try to draft some of the contour of this boundary.

David Lewis (1986) criticizes moderate views of composition on the grounds that a restriction on composition must be vague, and vague composition leads, via a precisificational theory of vagueness, to an absurd vagueness of existence. I show how to resist this argument. Unlike the usual resistance, however, I do not jettison precisificational views of vagueness. Instead, I blur the connection between composition and existence that Lewis assumes. On the resulting view, in troublesome cases of vague composition, there is an object, (...) which definitely exists, about which it is vague whether the relevant borderline parts compose it. (shrink)

A material simple is a material object that has no proper parts. Some philosophers have argued for the possibility of extended simples. Some have even argued for the possibility of heterogeneous simples or simples that have intrinsic variations across their surfaces. There is a puzzle, though, that is meant to show that extended, heterogeneous simples are impossible. Although several plausible responses have been given to this puzzle, I wish to reopen the case against extended, heterogeneous simples. In this paper, I (...) briefly canvass responses to this puzzle which may be made in defense of extended, heterogeneous simples. I then present a new version of this puzzle which targets simples that occupy atomic yet extended regions of space. It seems that none of the traditional responses can be used to successfully save this particular kind of extended simple from the new puzzle. I also consider some non-traditional defenses of heterogeneous extended simples and argue that they too are unsuccessful. Finally, I will argue that a substantial case can be made against the possibility of extended heterogeneous simples of any kind. (shrink)

This is a copy of my DPhil thesis, the abstract for which is as follows: The first third of this thesis argues for a B-theoretic conception of time according to which all times exist equally and the present is in no way privileged. I distinguish "ontological" A-theories from "non-ontological" ones, arguing that the latter are experientially unmotivated and barely coherent. With regard to the former, I focus mainly on presentism. After some remarks on how to formulate this (and eternalism) non-trivially, (...) I review the non-relativistic case against presentism. I then consider the impact of Special Relativity on the debate, and attempt to deepen this impact by supplying a modal variation on the standard arguments. The middle third of the thesis investigates persistence, contending that both endurance and perdurance are consonant with the eternalism already endorsed. After introducing these theories of persistence, and discussing in particular how best to formulate an eternalist endurance, I proceed to defend the coherence of this combination. The Problem of Change is addressed here. I then respond in some detail to recent allegations of relativistic threats to endurance. The final third of the thesis questions the validity of the endurantist-perdurantist dispute. I criticize two recently proposed translation schemes that aim to show this dispute to be non-substantive. However, the second scheme suggests a doctrine of "Ontological Equivalence" which I develop and consider. I then address the Rotating Discs Argument, using this to launch a discussion of identity, genidentity, and the relationship between them. (shrink)

There will be a few themes. One to get us going: expansion versus contraction. About an object, o, and the region, R, of space(time) in which o is exactly located,1 we may ask: i) must there exist expansions of o: objects in filled superregions2 of R? ii) must there exist contractions of o: objects in filled subregions of..

Possibilism—the view that there are non-actual, merely possible entities—is a surprisingly resilient doctrine.1 One particularly hardy strand of possibilism—the modal realism championed by David Lewis—continues to attract both foes who seek to demonstrate its falsity (or at least stare its advocates into apostasy) and friends who hope to defend modal realism (or, when necessary, modify modal realism so as to avoid problematic objections).2 Although I am neither a foe nor friend of modal realism (but some of my best friends are!), (...) like many I continue to be fascinated by the doctrine. (shrink)

Extended simple regions have been the focus of recent developments in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. However, only a handful of works provides a rigorous characterization of an extended simple region. In particular, a recent paper in this journal defends a definition based on an extrinsic notion of least distance. Call it the Least Distance proposal. This paper provides the first assessment of it. It argues that Least Distance faces difficulties and drawbacks. The paper then goes on to (...) suggest a different proposal, the Diameter proposal that is able to handle such drawbacks and difficulties. (shrink)

What are the properties of composite objects, and how do the properties of composite objects and the properties of their proper parts relate to one another? The answers to these questions depend upon which view of composition one adopts. One view, which I call the orthodox view, is that composite objects are numerically distinct from their proper parts, individually and collectively. Another view, known as composition as identity, is that composite objects are numerically identical to their proper parts, taken together. (...) I argue that the orthodox view entails that the intuitive picture of composite objects and their properties that most accept is false. Not so for composition as identity. I also show that all of the available alternatives face serious difficulties. This puts composition as identity at an advantage over the orthodox view, at least when it comes to accounting for the properties of composite objects. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

Disjointism is the view that co-located objects do not share any parts. A human-shaped statue is composed from a torso, head and limbs; the co-located lumpof clay is only composed from chunks of clay. This essay discusses the tenability of this relatively neglected view, focusing on two objections. The first objection is that disjointism implies co-located copies of microphysical particles. I argue that it doesn’t imply this and that there are more plausible disjointist views of tiny parts available. The second (...) objection is that disjointism is at a loss to explain how material objects can be co-located and why the weights of co-located objects don’t add up. The standard pluralist account appeals to the fact that co-located objects stand in mereological relations and this account is not available to the disjointist. I sketch an alternative account that appeals to a notion of ‘material identity’: the statue is taken to be the same matter as the lump of clay. The resort to a new theoretical primitive may seem to invite a quick rejection on grounds of unnecessary theoretical complexity but I argue that an abductive comparison with rival forms of pluralism shows that such a rejection is misguided. (shrink)

There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers like Śrīgupta (seventh–eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an unfounded illusion. In this paper, I present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s "neither-one-nor-many argument" against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning (...) is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the task, begun by Lewis and Lewis in their seminal paper on the topic, of offering a theory of holes according to which a hole is simply its hole-lining. I begin by motivating the theory, arguing that it holds interest even absent its original animating concerns of nominalism and materialism, and present desiderata any such theory must satisfy. With this in place, I offer a definition both of a lining and of hole sameness, arguing (...) that these can overcome the most prominent standing objections to identifying holes with linings. Finally, I present a more powerful counterargument in the spirit of Casati and Varzi, and conclude with an emended version of the theory meeting all our earlier desiderata. I conclude by dispelling some possible worries about the nominalist and materialist credentials of my theory. (shrink)

Both extended simples and unextended complexes have been extensively discussed and widely used in metaphysics and philosophy of physics. However, the characterizations of such notions are not entirely satisfactory inasmuch as they rely on a mereological notion of extension that is too simplistic. According to such a mereological notion, being extended boils down to having a mereologically complex exact location. In this paper, I make a detailed plea to supplement this notion of extension with a different one that is phrased (...) in terms of measure theory. This proposal has significant philosophical payoffs. I provide new characterizations of both extended simples and unextended complexes, that help re-evaluating the question of whether such entities are metaphysically possible. Finally, I advance several suggestions as to how different notions of extension relate, first, to one another and, second, to mereological structure. (shrink)

This article motivates and develops a reductive account of the structure of certain physical quantities in terms of their mereology. That is, I argue that quantitative relations like "longer than" or "3.6-times the volume of" can be analyzed in terms of necessary constraints those quantities put on the mereological structure of their instances. The resulting account, I argue, is able to capture the intuition that these quantitative relations are intrinsic to the physical systems they’re called upon to describe and explain.

Some philosophers defend the possibility of synchronic multilocation, and have even used it to defend other substantive metaphysical theses. But just how strong is the case for the possibility of synchronic multilocation? The answer to this question depends in part on whether synchronic multilocation is wedded to other controversial metaphysical notions. In this paper, I consider whether the possibility of synchronic multilocation depends on the possibility of time travel, and I conclude that the answer hinges on the nature of time (...) and persistence. (shrink)

Philosophers sometimes give arguments that presuppose the following principle: two theories can fail to be empirically equivalent on the sole basis that they present different “thick” metaphysical pictures of the world. Recently, a version of this principle has been invoked to respond to the argument that composite objects are dispensable to our best scientific theories. This response claims that our empirical evidence distinguishes between ordinary and composite-free theories, and it empirically favors the ordinary ones. In this paper, I ask whether (...) this response to the dispensability argument is tenable. I claim that it is not. This is because it presupposes an indefensible thesis about when two empirical consequences are distinct or the same. My argument provides some insight into what our empirical consequences are, and I conclude that empirical evidence is radically metaphysically neutral. This gives us some insight into the significant content of our scientific theories—the content that a scientific realist is committed to—and I show how this insight relates to questions about theoretical equivalence more broadly. (shrink)

It is well-known that the entangled quantum state of a composite object cannot be reduced to the states of its parts. This quantum holism provides a peculiar challenge to formulate an appropriate mereological model: When a system is in an entangled state, which objects are there on the micro and macro level, and which of the objects carries which properties? This paper chooses a modeling approach to answer these questions: It proceeds from a systematic overview of consistent mereological models for (...) entangled systems and discusses which of them is compatible with the quantum mechanical evidence (where quantum states are understood realistically). It reveals that entangled quantum systems neither describe undivided wholes nor objects that stand in irreducible relations. The appropriate model assumes that the entangled property is an irreducible non-relational plural property carried collectively by the micro objects, while there is no macro object. In this sense, quantum holism is an instance of property holism, not of object holism. (shrink)