Abstract
A standard response to the problem of diachronic vagueness is ‘the semantic solution’, which demands an abundant ontology. Although it is known that the abundant ontology does not logically preclude endurantism, their combination is rejected because it necessitates massive coincidence between countless objects. In this paper, I establish that the semantic solution is available not only to perdurantists but also to endurantists by showing that there is no problem with such ubiquitous and principled coincidence.
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Notes
Given various levels of composition, this allows for z’s having multiple composition profiles at a given time.
Not to be confused with the more famous Special Composition Question: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for some xs to compose a y? van Inwagen (1990, Ch. 2).
Markosian (1998) defends Brute Composition, according to which the answer to the Special Composition Question is infinitely long and uninformative, because composition facts are brute facts. I presume he would offer the same response to the SSCQ. Note that this would require him to defend that not only composition facts but also persistence facts are brute. This proposal is prone to the supervenience objections that I answer in this paper. Even if a Brutalist response to the SCQ is tolerable, a Brutalist response to the SSCQ is not, since it has no resources to answer the supervenience objections.
Following Sider (2001, p. 58), two objects overlap at a time if and only if something is a part of each then.
Sider (2001, Ch. 4.9).
This solution was suggested by an anonymous referee of this journal.
A more specific answer along the same lines would be to make the conditions laid out in the quantifier phrase not only jointly sufficient but also necessary conditions of successively composing a persisting thing. That view suffers from the problems as I raise for RP here. I am formulating RP as above to make its common features with DP explicit.
DAUP: “For every material object M, if R is the region of space occupied by M at time t, and if sub-R is any occupiable sub-region of R whatever, there exists a material object that occupies the region sub-R at t.” van Inwagen (1981, p. 23).
Varzi (2007, pp. 89–90).
Miller (2008) offers a similar argument.
For a survey of all the solutions on offer, see Brian Weatherson (2003).
In this article, I confine myself to the ontology of material beings. If persons are purely material beings, then they too seem to be much higher in number than we recognize. In the case of persons, this brings up additional problems such as the problem Hudson (2001) identifies as “many brothers determinism” (pp. 39–44). Thanks to an anonymous referee of this journal for pressing this point.
Temporal overlap is both temporal and atemporal. It is temporal in the sense that it is overlap along the dimension of time. It is atemporal in the sense that it does not occur at any particular moment or stretch of time.
This is not to say that it cannot be denied. Peter van Inwagen famously believes that undetached arbitrary divisions of cats do not exist.
Sider (2001, p. 156).
Sider (2001, p. 156).
A coincidence theorist is not necessarily committed to any thesis which states that only two things can coincide. Perhaps some matter might constitute two distinct objects at the same time, or an F constituted by some matter may itself constitute a further thing, a G.
How many is indefinitely many? If time is dense then a Plenitude thesis would entail the existence of infinitely many objects (when we assume the existence of some objects and some times).
For such a defense, see Johnston (2005).
Heller (1984, p. 368).
Perhaps an explanation can be given in terms of individual essences of the members of the plenitude. Then we can add that there is no explanation for why a property is essential to an individual mountain.
‘Precisely that change’ may be premature. Perhaps what happens to Mount 1 and what happens to Mount 2 are two coinciding events, not one. If so, then I would revise my wording such: ‘precisely a duplicate of that change.’
Sider (2001, pp. 158–159).
Supervenience in the intended sense fails. Weaker versions, such as that any two possible worlds alike in base facts must be alike in persistence facts do not fail because of plenitude. But in this weak sense there never was a problem of supervenience for the coincidence theorist.
For a related argument, see Wasserman (2002).
Sider (2007).
Three-dimensionalists reject Absoluteness unless they are also presentists, but I ignore this for the moment.
See Chisholm (1976) Person and Object, Ch. 3 and Appendix B.
Earlier Chisholm is especially clear on this issue. He held that a collection of objects may compose something at one time but not at another time due to becoming scattered, although later he allowed for persistence of sums through spatial scatter. See Steen (2008).
Without invoking relative identity or temporary identity, that is.
Maintaining this explanation of non-cumulation of weight would seem to require that the erosion event that befell Mount 1 and Mount 2 was not one event but two coincident events (see footnote 23 above).
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Acknowledgments
I thank Anna Alexandrova, Berit Brogaard, André Gallois, Mark Heller, Kris McDaniel, Tom McKay, Ted Sider, Mark Steen, Jim Stone, Bill Wringe, and Dean Zimmerman for comments they provided at various stages. I am also grateful to audiences at Bogazici and Middle East Technical Universities as well as the organizers and participants of the Works in Progress seminar at the University of Missouri—Saint Louis.
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Kurtsal Steen, I. Three-dimensionalist’s semantic solution to diachronic vagueness. Philos Stud 150, 79–96 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9360-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9360-3