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  1. Biological-mereological coincidence.Judith K. Crane - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 161 (2):309-325.
    This paper presents and defends an account of the coincidence of biological organisms with mereological sums of their material components. That is, an organism and the sum of its material components are distinct material objects existing in the same place at the same time. Instead of relying on historical or modal differences to show how such coincident entities are distinct, this paper argues that there is a class of physiological properties of biological organisms that their coincident mereological sums do not (...)
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  • Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    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.
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  • Do actions occur inside the body?Helen Steward - 2000 - Mind and Society 1 (2):107-125.
    The paper offers a critical examination of Jennifer Hornsby's view that actions are internal to the body. It focuses on three of Hornsby's central claims: (P) many actions are bodily movements (in a special sense of the word “movement”) (Q) all actions are tryings; and (R) all actions occur inside the body. It is argued, contra Hornsby, that we may accept (P) and (Q) without accepting also the implausible (R). Two arguments are first offered in favour of the thesis (Contrary-R): (...)
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  • Toward a Conceptualist Solution of the Grounding Problem.Iris Einheuser - 2010 - Noûs 45 (2):300-314.
    This paper defends a conceptualist answer to the question how objects come by their modal properties. It isolates the controversial metaphysical assumptions that are needed to get ontological conceptualism off the ground, outlines the conceptualist answer to the question and shows that conceptualism is not in as bad a shape as some critics have maintained.
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  • Material constitution.Ryan Wasserman - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Brutal Composition.Ned Markosian - 1998 - Philosophical Studies 92 (3):211 - 249.
    According to standard, pre-philosophical intuitions, there are many composite objects in the physical universe. There is, for example, my bicycle, which is composed of various parts - wheels, handlebars, molecules, atoms, etc. Recently, a growing body of philosophical literature has concerned itself with questions about the nature of composition.1 The main question that has been raised about composition is, roughly, this: Under what circumstances do some things compose, or add up to, or form, a single object? It turns out that (...)
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  • Entia successiva.Achille C. Varzi - 2003 - Rivista di Estetica 43 (1):139-158.
    The theory according to which most ordinary objects are mere “entia successiva”—sequences of distinct mereological aggregates, whose unity resides exclusively in our minds—is a variant of the standard, three-dimensional conception of objects. For the aggregates are, at bottom, endurants, i.e., entities that persist through time by being fully present at any time at which they exist. In this paper I compare this theory with the so-called “stage view”, according to which ordinary objects—indeed, all objects—are sequences of momentary entities that cannot (...)
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  • Ontic vagueness and metaphysical indeterminacy.J. Robert G. Williams - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (4):763-788.
    Might it be that world itself, independently of what we know about it or how we represent it, is metaphysically indeterminate? This article tackles in turn a series of questions: In what sorts of cases might we posit metaphysical indeterminacy? What is it for a given case of indefiniteness to be 'metaphysical'? How does the phenomenon relate to 'ontic vagueness', the existence of 'vague objects', 'de re indeterminacy' and the like? How might the logic work? Are there reasons for postulating (...)
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  • Mereology.Achille C. Varzi - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    An overview of contemporary part-whole theories, with reference to both their axiomatic developments and their philosophical underpinnings.
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  • Basic Problems of Mereotopology.Achille C. Varzi - 1998 - In Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. IOS Press. pp. 29–38.
    Mereotopology is today regarded as a major tool for ontological analysis, and for many good reasons. There are, however, a number of open questions that call for an answer. Some are philosophical, others have direct applicative import, but all are crucial for a proper assessment of the strengths and limits of mereotopology. This paper is an attempt to put sum order in this area.
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  • Spatial Reasoning and Ontology: Parts, Wholes, and Locations.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - In Marco Aiello, Ian Pratt-Hartmann & Johan van Benthem (eds.), Handbook of Spatial Logics. Springer Verlag. pp. 945-1038.
    A critical survey of the fundamental philosophical issues in the logic and formal ontology of space, with special emphasis on the interplay between mereology (the theory of parthood relations), topology (broadly understood as a theory of qualitative spatial relations such as continuity and contiguity), and the theory of spatial location proper.
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  • La natura e l'identità degli oggetti materiali.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - In Annalisa Coliva (ed.), Filosofia analitica: temi e problemi. Roma: Carocci. pp. 17–56.
    A critical survey of the main metaphysical theories concerning the nature of material objects (substratum theories, bundle theories, substance theories, stuff theories) and their identity conditions, both synchronic (monist vs. pluralist theories) and diachronic (three-dimensionalism, four-dimensionalism, sequentialism).
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  • Mereological commitments.Achille C. Varzi - 2000 - Dialectica 54 (4):283–305.
    We tend to talk about (refer to, quantify over) parts in the same way in which we talk about whole objects. Yet a part is not something to be included in an inventory of the world over and above the whole to which it belongs, and a whole is not something to be included in the inventory over and above its constituent parts. This paper is an attempt to clarify a way of dealing with this tension which may be labeled (...)
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  • The crooked path from vagueness to four-dimensionalism.Kathrin Koslicki - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 114 (1-2):107-134.
    In his excellent book, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (Sider, 2001), Theodore Sider defends a version of four-dimensionalism which he calls the ‘stage-theory’. This paper focuses on Sider's argument from vagueness and argues that, due to the problematic nature of the argument from vagueness, Sider’s case in favor of four-dimensionalism is in the end not successful.
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  • The non-identity of a material thing and its matter.Kit Fine - 2003 - Mind 112 (446):195-234.
    There is a well-known argument from Leibniz's Law for the view that coincident material things may be distinct. For given that they differ in their properties, then how can they be the same? However, many philosophers have suggested that this apparent difference in properties is the product of a linguistic illusion; there is just one thing out there, but different sorts or guises under which it may be described. I attempt to show that this ‘opacity’ defence has intolerable consequences for (...)
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  • Illusions of gunk.J. Robert G. Williams - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):493–513.
    Worlds where things divide forever ("gunk" worlds) are apparently conceivable. The conceivability of such scenarios has been used as an argument against "nihilist" or "near-nihilist" answers to the special composition question. I argue that the mereological nihilist has the resources to explain away the illusion that gunk is possible.
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  • The Universe among Other Things.Achille C. Varzi - 2006 - Ratio 19 (1):107–120.
    Peter Simons has argued that the expression ‘the universe’ is not a genuine singular term: it can name neither a single, completely encompassing individual, nor a collection of individuals. (It is, rather, a semantically plural term standing equally for every existing object.) I offer reasons for resisting Simons’s arguments on both scores.
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  • All the World’s a Stage.Theodore Sider - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (3):433 – 453.
    Some philosophers believe that everyday objects are 4-dimensional spacetime worms, that a person (for example) persists through time by having temporal parts, or stages, at each moment of her existence. None of these stages is identical to the person herself; rather, she is the aggregate of all her temporal parts.1 Others accept “three dimensionalism”, rejecting stages in favor of the notion that persons “endure”, or are “wholly present” throughout their lives.2 I aim to defend an apparently radical third view: not (...)
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  • In defense of essentialism.L. A. Paul - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):333–372.
    If an object has a property essentially, it has that property in every possible world according to which it exists.2 If an object has a property accidentally, it does not have that property in every possible world according to which it exists. Claims about an object’s essential or accidental properties are de re modal claims, and essential and accidental properties are de re modal properties. Take an object’s modal profile to specify its essential properties and the range of its accidental (...)
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  • Non-mereological universalism.Kristie Miller - 2006 - European Journal of Philosophy 14 (3):404–422.
    In this paper I develop a version of universalism that is non-mereological. Broadly speaking, non-mereological universalism is the thesis that for any arbitrary set of objects and times, there is a persisting object which, at each of those times, will be constituted by those of the objects that exist at that time. I consider two general versions of non-mereological universalism, one which takes basic simples to be enduring objects, and the other which takes simples to be instantaneous objects. This yields (...)
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  • Promiscuous Endurantism and Diachronic Vagueness.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2):181-189.
    According to a popular line of reasoning, diachronic vagueness creates a problem for the endurantist conception of persistence. Some authors have replied that this line of reasoning is inconclusive, since the endurantist can subscribe to a principle of Diachronic Unrestricted Composition (DUC) that is perfectly parallel to the principle required by the perdurantist’s semantic account. I object that the endurantist should better avoid DUC. And I argue that even DUC, if accepted, would fail to provide the endurantist with the necessary (...)
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  • Some things about stuff.Shieva Kleinschmidt - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 135 (3):407-423.
    I examine the implications of positing stuff as a way to avoid colocation in the case of the statue and the bronze that constitutes it. When characterising stuff, it’s intuitive to say we often individuate stuff kinds by appealing to things and their relations. I argue that if this intuition is correct, there are important restrictions on how we can characterise stuff in order to avoid colocated portions of stuff.
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  • Travelling in time: How to wholly exist in two places at the same time.Kristie Miller - 2006 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (3):309-334.
    It is possible to wholly exist at multiple spatial locations at the same time. At least, if time travel is possible and objects endure, then such must be the case. To accommodate this possibility requires the introduction of a spatial analog of either relativising properties to times—relativising properties to spatial locations—or of relativising the manner of instantiation to times—relativising the manner of instantiation to spatial locations. It has been suggested, however, that introducing irreducibly spatially relativised or spatially adverbialised properties presents (...)
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  • The conception of a person as a series of mental events.Scott Campbell - 2006 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2):339–358.
    It is argued that those who accept the psychological criterion of personal identity, such as Parfit and Shoemaker, should accept what I call the 'series' view of a person, according to which a person is a unified aggregate of mental events and states. As well as defending this view against objections, I argue that it allows the psychological theorist to avoid the two lives objection which the 'animalist' theorists have raised against it, an objection which causes great difficulties for the (...)
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  • Externalism, Physicalism, Statues, and Hunks.Bryan Frances - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 133 (2):199-232.
    Content externalism is the dominant view in the philosophy of mind. Content essentialism, the thesis that thought tokens have their contents essentially, is also popular. And many externalists are supporters of such essentialism. However, endorsing the conjunction of those views either (i) commits one to a counterintuitive view of the underlying physical nature of thought tokens or (ii) commits one to a slightly different but still counterintuitive view of the relation of thought tokens to physical tokens as well as a (...)
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  • Event plenitude.Uriah Kriegel - 2024 - Synthese 204 (2):1-16.
    One of the salient developments in recent metaphysics is the increasing popularity of _material plenitude_: roughly, the thesis that wherever there is one material object there is in fact a great multitude of co-located but numerically distinct objects that differ principally in which of their properties they have essentially and which accidentally. Here I argue that we have at least as much reason to look favorably on _event plenitude_: wherever one event occurs there occur a great multitude of co-located but (...)
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  • A Phasalist Approach to Coincidence Puzzles.Justin Mooney - forthcoming - The Philosophical Quarterly.
    The phasalist solution to the classic puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay only works for some coincidence puzzles and not others. To address this limitation of phasalism, I develop a novel approach to coincidence puzzles that permits different kinds of coincidence puzzles to be solved in different ways, provided that each solution satisfies certain constraints inspired by the phasalist solution to the statue puzzle. I apply my approach to four different kinds of coincidence puzzles, and I argue (...)
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  • Naïve Realism and the Relationality of Phenomenal Character.Roberta Locatelli - 2023 - Topoi 43 (1).
    Naïve realism (also called ‘relationalism’ or ‘object view’) is becoming increasingly popular, but the specific outline of its commitments remains often underspecified by proponents and misunderstood by critics. Naïve realism is associated with two claims, both concerning genuine, veridical perceptual experience (where this excludes hallucinations). Constitutive Claim (CC): The phenomenal character of perception is (partly) constituted by the mind-independent objects in one’s surrounding and their properties. Relational Claim (RC): Perception is a relation to mind-independent objects in the environment and their (...)
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  • Something Stoic in the Sophist.Vanessa de Harven - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 63.
    The Stoics have often been compared to the earthborn Giants in the Battle of Gods and Giants in Plato’s Sophist, but with diverging opinions about the lessons they drew in reaction to Plato. At issue are questions about what in the Sophist the Stoics were reacting to, how the Stoics are like and unlike the Giants, the status of being for the Stoics, and the extent to which they were Platonizing with their incorporeals. With these open questions in mind, I (...)
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  • Transparency and the explanatory gap.Kelly Trogdon - forthcoming - In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness. Oxford University Press. pp. 1-21.
    Grounding-theoretic account of the notion of transparency relevant to the explanatory gap between the mental and physical.
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  • Agency: Let's Mind What's Fundamental.Robert H. Wallace - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):285–298.
    The standard event-causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event-causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent-mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this (...)
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  • Multifunctional Artefacts and Collocation.David-Hillel Ruben - 2022 - Metaphysics 5 (1):66-77.
    There appear to be multifunctional artefacts of a type such that none of their functions can be attributed only to some proper part of the artefact. I use two examples of allegedly multifunctional artefacts of this kind in what follows, one due to Lynne Rudder Baker (aspirin) and another of my own (a spork). The two examples are meant to make the same point. I discuss her aspirin example, since its discussion has entered the literature, but without its being dealt (...)
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  • Fregean Monism: A Solution to the Puzzle of Material Constitution.Soo Lam Wong - 2020 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 27 (4):504-521.
    The puzzle of material constitution can be expressed in at least two ways. First, how can the constituting object and the constituted object, which are materially and spatially coincident, be regarded as different objects? Second, how can the constituting object and the constituted object, which are qualitatively distinct, be regarded as identical objects? Monists argue that the constituting and constituted objects are identical since they are materially and spatially coincident and the property differences between then are simply differences in description, (...)
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  • Biological Individuality and the Foetus Problem.William Morgan - 2022 - Erkenntnis 89 (2):799-816.
    The Problem of Biological Individuality is the problem of how to count organisms. Whilst counting organisms may seem easy, the biological world is full of difficult cases such as colonial siphonophores and aspen tree groves. One of the main solutions to the Problem of Biological Individuality is the Physiological Approach. Drawing on an argument made by Eric Olson in the personal identity debate, I argue that the Physiological Approach faces a metaphysical problem - the ‘Foetus Problem’. This paper illustrates how (...)
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  • Johnston versus Johnston.Kacper Kowalczyk - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-19.
    Personites are like continuant people but shorter-lived. Johnston argues that personites do not exist since otherwise personites would have the same moral status as persons, which is untenable. I argue that Johnston’s arguments fail. To do that I propose an alternative way to understand intrinsicness and I clarify the meaning of reductionism about persons. I also argue that a plausible ethical theory is possible even if personites have the same moral status as persons. My arguments draw on Johnston’s earlier debate (...)
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  • Egalitarian vs. Elitist Plenitude.Uriah Kriegel - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (10):3055-3070.
    A number of prominent metaphysicians have recently defended the idea of material plenitude: wherever there is one material object, there is in fact a great multitude of them, all coincident and sharing many properties, but differing in which of these properties they have essentially and which accidentally. The main goal of this paper is to put on the agenda an important theoretical decision that plenitudinists face, regarding whether their plenitude is egalitarian or elitist, depending on whether or not they take (...)
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  • Mind the Gap: The Space between Coincidence and Colocation.Jeroen Smid - 2021 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (1):57-73.
    In debates about the metaphysics of material objects examples of colocated objects are commonly taken to be examples of coincidence too. But the argument that colocation is best understood as involving coincidence is never spelled out. This paper shows under what conditions colocation entails coincidence and argues that the entailment depends on a principle that actually rules out certain forms of colocation. This undermines the argument from colocation to coincidence.
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  • Different Samenesses: Essays on Non-Standard Views of Identity.Eric de Araujo - 2021 - Dissertation, The Ohio State University
    Few views are as widely held as the Standard View of Identity. Here I am concerned with minority views that depart from the standard account. First, I attempt to illuminate such views and the debates concerning them by identifying the principles of identity at issue, articulating some of the assumptions underlying the debates, and presenting some of the evidence used against the Standard View of Identity. Second, I enter two of these debates myself. I first defend two Non-Standard Views of (...)
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  • Norm and Object: A Normative Hylomorphic Theory of Social Objects.Asya Passinsky - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (25):1-21.
    This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason to believe that no concrete object can (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Stoic Corporealism.Vanessa de Harven - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (2):219-245.
    The Stoics are famously committed to the thesis that only bodies are, and for this reason they are rightly called “corporealists.” They are also famously compared to Plato’s earthborn Giants in the Sophist, and rightly so given their steadfast commitment to body as being. But the Stoics also notoriously turn the tables on Plato and coopt his “dunamis proposal” that being is whatever can act or be acted upon to underwrite their commitment to body rather than shrink from it as (...)
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  • Sui criteri d'identità.Massimiliano Carrara - 2018 - Padova: Padova University Press.
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  • Turning Aboutness About.Alexander Sandgren - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (1):136-155.
    There are two families of influential and stubborn puzzles that many theories of aboutness (intentionality) face: underdetermination puzzles and puzzles concerning representations that appear to be about things that do not exist. I propose an approach that elegantly avoids both kinds of puzzle. The central idea is to explain aboutness (the relation supposed to stand between thoughts and terms and their objects) in terms of relations of co-aboutness (the relation of being about the same thing that stands between the thoughts (...)
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  • (1 other version)Persistence in Time.Damiano Costa - 2020 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Persistence in Time No person ever steps into the same river twice—or so goes the Heraclitean maxim. Obscure as it is, the maxim is often taken to express two ideas. The first is that everything always changes, and nothing remains perfectly similar to how it was just one instant before. The second is that nothing … Continue reading Persistence in Time →.
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  • Full and partial grounding.Kelly Trogdon & D. Gene Witmer - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2):252-271.
    Discussion of partial grounds that aren't parts of full grounds; definition of full grounding in terms of partial grounding.
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  • Toward a Lockean Unification of Formal and Traditional Epistemology.Matthew Brandon Lee & Paul Silva - 2022 - Episteme 19 (1):111-129.
    A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned (...)
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  • Being of Two Minds (or of One in Two Ways): A New Puzzle for Constitution Views of Personal Identity.Rina Tzinman - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (1):22-42.
    According to constitution views of persons, we are constituted by spatially coinciding human animals. Constitution views face an ‘overpopulation’ puzzle: if the animal has my brain, there is another thinker where I am. An influential solution to this problem distinguishes between derivative and non‐derivative property possession: persons non‐derivatively have their personal properties, while inheriting others from their constituters. I will show that this solution raises a new problem, by constructing a puzzle with the absurd result that we instantiate certain properties (...)
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  • Constitution and Dependence.David Mark Kovacs - 2020 - Journal of Philosophy 117 (3):150-177.
    Constitution is the relation that holds between an object and what it is made of: statues are constituted by the lumps of matter they coincide with; flags, one may think, are constituted by colored pieces of cloth; and perhaps human persons are constituted by biological organisms. Constitution is often thought to be a.
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  • No Hope in the Dark: Problems for four-dimensionalism.Jonathan J. Loose - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (3):31-47.
    Whether or not it is coherent to place hope in a future life beyond the grave has become a central question in the larger debate about whether a materialist view of human persons can accommodate Christian belief. Hud Hudson defends a four-dimensional account of resurrection in order to avoid persistent difficulties experienced by three-dimensionalist animalism. I present two difficulties unique to Hudson’s view. The first problem of counterpart hope is a manifestation of a general weakness of four-dimensional views to accommodate (...)
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  • Maximality, Function, and the Many.Robert Francescotti - 2019 - Metaphysica 20 (2):175-193.
    In the region where some cat sits, there are many very cat-like items that are proper parts of the cat (or otherwise mereologically overlap the cat) , but which we are inclined to think are not themselves cats, e.g. all of Tibbles minus the tail. The question is, how can something be so cat-like without itself being a cat. Some have tried to answer this “Problem of the Many” (a problem that arises for many different kinds of things we regularly (...)
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  • What Is a Thing?M. Oreste Fiocco - 2019 - Metaphilosophy 50 (5):649-669.
    ‘Thing’ in the titular question should be construed as having the utmost generality. In the relevant sense, a thing just is an entity, an existent, a being. The present task is to say what a thing of any category is. This task is, I believe, the primary one of any comprehensive and systematic metaphysics. Indeed, an answer provides the means for resolving perennial disputes concerning the integrity of the structure in reality—whether some of the relations among things are necessary merely (...)
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