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  1. On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
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  • Parts of Classes.David K. Lewis - 1991 - Mind 100 (3):394-397.
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  • (2 other versions)Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Philosophy of Science 42 (3):341-344.
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  • Coincidence: The Grounding Problem, Object-Specifying Principles, and Some Consequences.Alan Sidelle - 2016 - Philosophical Papers 45 (3):497-528.
    This paper lays out the basic structure of any view involving coincident entities, in the light of the grounding problem. While the account is not novel, I highlight fundamental features, to which attention is not usually properly drawn. With this in place, I argue for a number of further claims: The basic differences between coincident objects are modal differences, and any other differences between them need to be explained in terms of these differences. More specifically, the basic difference is not (...)
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  • Quantitative Parsimony: Probably for the Better.Lina Jansson & Jonathan Tallant - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3):781–803.
    ABSTRACT Our aim in this article is to offer a new justification for preferring theories that are more quantitatively parsimonious than their rivals. We discuss cases where it seems clear that those involved opted for more quantitatively parsimonious theories. We extend previous work on quantitative parsimony by offering an independent probabilistic justification for preferring the more quantitatively parsimonious theories in particular episodes of theory choice. Our strategy allows us to avoid worries that other considerations, such as pragmatic factors of computational (...)
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  • Universals: An Opinionated Introduction.Jerrold Levinson & D. M. Armstrong - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (3):654.
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  • Towards a Theory of Part.Kit Fine - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (11):559-589.
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  • Universalism entails Extensionalism.Achille C. Varzi - 2009 - Analysis 69 (4):599-604.
    I argue that Universalism (the thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted) entails Extensionalism (the thesis that sameness of composition is sufficient for identity) as long as the parthood relation is transitive and satisfies the Weak Supplementation principle (to the effect that whenever a thing has a proper part, it has another part disjoint from the first).
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  • Individuals: an essay in revisionary metaphysics.Shamik Dasgupta - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (1):35-67.
    We naturally think of the material world as being populated by a large number of individuals . These are things, such as my laptop and the particles that compose it, that we describe as being propertied and related in various ways when we describe the material world around us. In this paper I argue that, fundamentally speaking at least, there are no such things as material individuals. I then propose and defend an individual-less view of the material world I call (...)
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  • Coincidence and Form.Kit Fine - 2008 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 82 (1):101-118.
    How can a statue and a piece of alloy be coincident at any time at which they exist and yet differ in their modal properties? I argue that this question demands an answer and that the only plausible answer is one that posits a difference in the form of the two objects.
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  • Deep Platonism.Chad Carmichael - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2):307-328.
    According to the traditional bundle theory, particulars are bundles of compresent universals. I think we should reject the bundle theory for a variety of reasons. But I will argue for the thesis at the core of the bundle theory: that all the facts about particulars are grounded in facts about universals. I begin by showing how to meet the main objection to this thesis (which is also the main objection to the bundle theory): that it is inconsistent with the possibility (...)
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  • What Not to Multiply Without Necessity.Jonathan Schaffer - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (4):644-664.
    The Razor commands us not to multiply entities without necessity. I argue for an alternative principle—The Laser—which commands us not to multiply fundamental entities without necessity.
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  • A grounding solution to the grounding problem.Noël B. Saenz - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2193-2214.
    The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, the statue is not the lump. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially (...)
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  • The Argument from Vagueness for Modal Parts.Meg Wallace - 2014 - Dialectica 68 (3):355-373.
    It has been argued by some that the argument from vagueness is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the theory of temporal parts. I will neither support nor dispute this claim here. Rather, I will present a version of the argument from vagueness, which – if successful – commits one to the existence of modal parts. I argue that a commitment to the soundness of the argument from vagueness for temporal parts compels one to commit to the soundness (...)
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  • Mereological Extensionality, Supplementation, and Material Constitution.E. J. Lowe - 2013 - The Monist 96 (1):131-148.
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  • Composition, Persistence, and Identity.Nikk Effingham - 2009 - In Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. New York: Routledge. pp. 296.
    An introduction to composition, persistence, and identity.
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  • Mill, mathematics, and the naturalist tradition.Philip Kitcher - 1998 - In John Skorupski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mill. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 57--111.
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  • Endurantism and Perdurantism.Nikk Effingham - 2012 - In Robert Barnard & Neil Manson (eds.), Continuum Companion to Metaphysics. Continuum Publishing. pp. 170.
    An introduction to the theories of endurantism and perdurantism, and persistence more broadly.
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  • Immanent Realism: A Reconstruction of an Early Medieval Solution to the Problem of Universals.Christophe Erismann - 2007 - Documenti E Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 18:211-29.
    Nell'alto medioevo vi erano tre possibilità per il filosofo che volesse difendere l'esistenza degli universali: in primo luogo ante rem, seguendo la linea platonico-agostiniana degli universali trascendenti e questa è la via teologica; in secondo luogo la via post rem, cioè la via del concettualismo, conosciuta oggi come astrattismo, per cui gli universali sono il prodotto dell'astrazione della mente e questa è una via logica; la terza via è quella in re e difende gli universali immanenti che esistono negli universali (...)
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  • (1 other version)Against Ostrich Nominalism: a Reply to Michael Devitt.David Armstrong - 1980 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (4):440-449.
    In my reply to michael devitt, It is argued, First, That quine fails to appreciate the force of plato's "one over many" argument for universals. It is argued, Second, That quine's failure springs in part at least from his doctrine of ontological commitment: from the view that predicates need not be treated with ontological seriousness. Finally, An attempt is made to blunt the force of devitt's contention that realists cannot give a coherent explanation of the way that universals stand to (...)
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  • How Involved do You Want to be in a Non-symmetric Relationship?Fraser MacBride - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (1):1-16.
    There are three different degrees to which we may allow a systematic theory of the world to embrace the idea of relatedness—supposing realism about non-symmetric relations as a background requirement. (First Degree) There are multiple ways in which a non-symmetric relation may apply to the things it relates—for the binary case, aRb ≠ bRa. (Second Degree) Every such relation has a distinct converse—for every R such that aRb there is another relation R* such that bR*a. (Third Degree) Each one of (...)
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  • The Action of the Whole.Jonathan Schaffer - 2013 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1):67-87.
    I discuss an argument for the monistic idea that the cosmos is the one and only fundamental thing, drawing on the idea that the cosmos is the one and only thing that evolves by the fundamental laws.
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  • Overall similarity, natural properties, and paraphrases.Ghislain Guigon - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (2):387-399.
    I call anti-resemblism the thesis that independently of any contextual specification there is no determinate fact of the matter about the comparative overall similarity of things. Anti-resemblism plays crucial roles in the philosophy of David Lewis. For instance, Lewis has argued that his counterpart theory is anti-essentialist on the grounds that counterpart relations are relations of comparative overall similarity and that anti-resemblism is true. After Lewis committed himself to a form of realism about natural properties he maintained that anti-resemblism is (...)
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  • Emergence and Fundamentality.Elizabeth Barnes - 2012 - Mind 121 (484):873-901.
    In this paper, I argue for a new way of characterizing ontological emergence. I appeal to recent discussions in meta-ontology regarding fundamentality and dependence, and show how emergence can be simply and straightforwardly characterized using these notions. I then argue that many of the standard problems for emergence do not apply to this account: given a clearly specified meta-ontological background, emergence becomes much easier to explicate. If my arguments are successful, they show both a helpful way of thinking about emergence (...)
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  • A Spatial Approach to Mereology.Ned Markosian - 2014 - In Shieva Kleinschmidt (ed.), Mereology and Location. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    When do several objects compose a further object? The last twenty years have seen a great deal of discussion of this question. According to the most popular view on the market, there is a physical object composed of your brain and Jeremy Bentham’s body. According to the second-most popular view on the market, there are no such objects as human brains or human bodies, and there are also no atoms, rocks, tables, or stars. And according to the third-ranked view, there (...)
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  • Slots in Universals.Cody Gilmore - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 8:187-233.
    Slot theory is the view that (i) there exist such entities as argument places, or ‘slots’, in universals, and that (ii) a universal u is n-adic if and only if there are n slots in u. I argue that those who take properties and relations to be abundant, fine-grained, non-set-theoretical entities face pressure to be slot theorists. I note that slots permit a natural account of the notion of adicy. I then consider a series of ‘slot-free’ accounts of that notion (...)
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  • (1 other version)Temporal Parts.Theodore Sider - 2008 - In Theodore Sider, John P. Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary debates in metaphysics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 241--262.
    An introduction to temporal parts theory. Most of us believe in spatial parts: hands are spatial parts of people, an electron is a spatial part of a hydrogen atom, the earth is a spatial part of the solar system. Why are these parts "spatial" parts? Because they are spatially smaller: the hand is spatially smaller than the person, the electron is spatially smaller than the atom, the earth is spatially smaller than the solar system. Temporal parts, then, are parts that (...)
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  • Foundations without Sets.George Bealer - 1981 - American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (4):347 - 353.
    The dominant school of logic, semantics, and the foundation of mathematics construct its theories within the framework of set theory. There are three strategies by means of which a member of this school might attempt to justify his ontology of sets. One strategy is to show that sets are already included in the naturalistic part of our everyday ontology. If they are, then one may assume that whatever justifies the everyday ontology justifies the ontology of sets. Another strategy is to (...)
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  • Locations.John Hawthorne & Theodore Sider - 2002 - Philosophical Topics 30 (1):53-76.
    Think of “locations” very abstractly, as positions in a space, any space. Temporal locations are positions in time; spatial locations are positions in (physical) space; particulars are locations in quality space. Should we reify locations? Are locations entities? Spatiotemporal relation- alists say there are no such things as spatiotemporal locations; the fundamental spatial and temporal facts involve no locations as objects, only the instantiation of spatial and temporal relations. The denial of locations in quality space is the bundle theory, according (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Mereological Harmony.Gabriel Uzquiano - 2008 - In Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    This paper takes a close look at the thought that mereological relations on material objects mirror, and are mirrored by, parallel mereological relations on their exact locations. This hypothesis is made more precise by means of a battery of principles from which more substantive consequences are derived. Mereological harmony turns out to entail, for example, that atomistic space is an inhospitable environment for material gunk or that Whiteheadian space is not a hospitable environment for unextended material atoms.
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  • Spatially Coinciding Objects.Frederick C. Doepke - 1982 - Ratio:10--24.
    Following Wiggins’ seminal article, On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time, this article presents the first comprehensive account of the relation of material constitution, an asymmetrical, transitive relation which totally orders distinct ‘entities’ (individuals, pluralities or masses of stuff) which ‘spatially coincide.’ Their coincidence in space is explained by a recursive definition of ‘complete-composition’, weaker than strict mereological indiscernibility, which also explains the variety of logically independent similarities in such cases. This account is ‘analytical’, dealing with ‘putative’ (...)
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  • Monism: The Priority of the Whole.Jonathan Schaffer - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (1):31-76.
    Consider a circle and a pair of its semicircles. Which is prior, the whole or its parts? Are the semicircles dependent abstractions from their whole, or is the circle a derivative construction from its parts? Now in place of the circle consider the entire cosmos (the ultimate concrete whole), and in place of the pair of semicircles consider the myriad particles (the ultimate concrete parts). Which if either is ultimately prior, the one ultimate whole or its many ultimate parts?
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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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  • What is the Grounding Problem?Louis deRosset - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 156 (2):173-197.
    A philosophical standard in the debates concerning material constitution is the case of a statue and a lump of clay, Goliath and Lumpl, respectively. According to the story, Lumpl and Goliath are coincident throughout their respective careers. Monists hold that they are identical; pluralists that they are distinct. This paper is concerned with a particular objection to pluralism, the Grounding Problem. The objection is roughly that the pluralist faces a legitimate explanatory demand to explain various differences she alleges between Lumpl (...)
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  • Mereology without weak supplementation.Donald Smith - 2009 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3):505 – 511.
    According to the Weak Supplementation Principle (WSP)—a widely received principle of mereology—an object with a proper part, p , has another distinct proper part that doesn't overlap p . In a recent article in this journal, Nikk Effingham and Jon Robson employ WSP in an objection to endurantism. I defend endurantism in a way that bears on mereology in general. First, I argue that denying WSP can be motivated apart from the truth of endurantism. I then go on to offer (...)
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  • What Would Teleological Causation Be?John Hawthorne & Daniel Nolan - 2006 - In Metaphysical essays. New York: Clarendon Press.
    As is well known, Aristotelian natural philosophy, and many other systems of natural philosophy since, have relied heavily on teleology and teleological causation. Somehow, the purpose or end of an obj ect can be used to predict and explain what that object does: once you know that the end of an acorn is to become an oak, and a few things about what sorts of circumstances are conducive to the attainment of this end, you can predict a lot about the (...)
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  • Construction area (no hard hat required).Karen Bennett - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (1):79-104.
    A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.
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  • Persistence, composition, and identity.Nikk Effingham - 2009 - In Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. New York: Routledge.
    An introduction to persistence, composition, and identity.
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  • Quality and concept.George Bealer - 1982 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This study provides a unified theory of properties, relations, and propositions (PRPs). Two conceptions of PRPs have emerged in the history of philosophy. The author explores both of these traditional conceptions and shows how they can be captured by a single theory.
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  • The metaphysics of groups.Nikk Effingham - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (2):251-267.
    If you are a realist about groups there are three main theories of what to identify groups with. I offer reasons for thinking that two of those theories fail to meet important desiderata. The third option is to identify groups with sets, which meets all of the desiderata if only we take care over which sets they are identified with. I then canvass some possible objections to that third theory, and explain how to avoid them.
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  • Logical parts.Laurie A. Paul - 2002 - Noûs 36 (4):578–596.
    I argue for a property mereology and for mereological bundle theory. I then apply this theory to the one over many problem (universals) and puzzles concerning persistence and material constitution.
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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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  • Hegel, british idealism, and the curious case of the concrete universal.Robert Stern - 2007 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (1):115 – 153.
    [INTRODUCTION] Like the terms 'dialectic', 'Aufhebung' (or 'sublation'), and 'Geist', the term 'concrete universal' has a distinctively Hegelian ring to it. But unlike these others, it is particularly associated with the British strand in Hegel's reception history, as having been brought to prominence by some of the central British Idealists. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that, as their star has waned, so too has any use of the term, while an appreciation of the problematic that lay behind it has seemingly (...)
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  • "Bare particulars".Theodore Sider - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):387–397.
    One often hears a complaint about “bare particulars”. This complaint has bugged me for years. I know it bugs others too, but no one seems to have vented in print, so that is what I propose to do. (I hope also to say a few constructive things along the way.) The complaint is aimed at the substratum theory, which says that particulars are, in a certain sense, separate from their universals. If universals and particulars are separate, connected to each other (...)
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  • Identity, ostension, and hypostasis.W. V. Quine - 1950 - Journal of Philosophy 47 (22):621-633.
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  • Quantitative parsimony.Daniel Nolan - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):329-343.
    In this paper, I motivate the view that quantitative parsimony is a theoretical virtue: that is, we should be concerned not only to minimize the number of kinds of entities postulated by our theories (i. e. maximize qualitative parsimony), but we should also minimize the number of entities postulated which fall under those kinds. In order to motivate this view, I consider two cases from the history of science: the postulation of the neutrino and the proposal of Avogadro's hypothesis. I (...)
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  • The structure of the chinese language and ontological insights: A collective-noun hypothesis.Bo Mou - 1999 - Philosophy East and West 49 (1):45-62.
    Through a comparative case analysis regarding the Chinese language, it is discussed how the structure and functions of a natural language would bear upon the ways in which some philosophical problems are posed and some ontological insights shaped. Disagreeing with Chad Hansen's mass-noun hypothesis, a collective-noun hypothesis is argued for: (1) the denotational semantics and relevant grammatical features of Chinese nouns are like those of collective nouns; (2) their implicit ontology is a mereological ontology of collection-of-individuals with both part-whole and (...)
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  • Contingent identity.Allan Gibbard - 1975 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 4 (2):187-222.
    Identities formed with proper names may be contingent. this claim is made first through an example. the paper then develops a theory of the semantics of concrete things, with contingent identity as a consequence. this general theory lets concrete things be made up canonically from fundamental physical entities. it includes theories of proper names, variables, cross-world identity with respect to a sortal, and modal and dispositional properties. the theory, it is argued, is coherent and superior to its rivals, in that (...)
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  • Ways worlds could be.Peter Forrest - 1986 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1):15 – 24.
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  • Neutral relations.Kit Fine - 2000 - Philosophical Review 109 (1):1-33.
    There is a standard view of relations, held by philosophers and logicians alike, according to which we may meaningfully talk of a relation holding of several objects in a given order. Thus it is supposed that we may meaningfully—indeed, correctly—talk of the relation loves holding of Anthony and Cleopatra or of the relation between holding of New York, Washington, and Boston. But innocuous as this view might appear to be, it cannot be accepted as applying to all relations whatever. For (...)
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