Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T15:58:04.693Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

New Paradoxes of Motion: Arguing Against Open-Bounded Material Objects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

Robert E. Pezet
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is widely assumed that a geometric model of boundaries, which prescribes a tripartite topological characterisation of the boundaries for material objects – fully open, fully closed, or partially open/closed – can be unproblematically extended from regions to material objects. Drawing on a disanalogy between regions and material objects – that only the latter move – I demonstrate the incoherence of (fully or partially) open material objects through two arguments relating to the ability for such objects to freely move. The first is a dilemma considering separately open material objects occupying their location directly or indirectly (located in virtue of their proper parts occupying locations). It is argued that movement in the former case would involve a miraculous topological transformation; whilst in the latter case, would involve miraculous reorganising movements in the object's proper parts. The second argument reignites a problem regarding the moment of change specifically for the movement of such objects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 96 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 301 - 317
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Casati, Roberto and Varzi, Achille C., Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation (London: MIT Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Dainton, Barry, Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience (London: Routledge, 2000).Google Scholar
Heil, John, Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heil, John, From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Hud, The Metaphysics of Hyperspace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Lewis, David Kellogg, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).Google Scholar
Lowe, Edward Jonathan, The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Priest, Graham, In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 2nd Eds.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan, ‘Spacetime the one substance’, Philosophical Studies, 145(1) (2009), 131–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, Theodore, ‘Simply Possible,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 60(3) (2000), 585–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, Theodore, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, Theodore, ‘Against parthood’, in Bennett, Karen and Zimmerman, Dean W. (Eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Volume 8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 237–93.Google Scholar
Simons, Peter, ‘Extended simples: a third way between atoms and gunk’, The Monist, 87(3) (2004), 371–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorabji, Richard, Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Varzi, Achille C., ‘Mereology’, in Zalta, E.N. (Eds.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (2016), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/mereology/>..>Google Scholar
Weber, Zach and Cotnoir, Aaron J., ‘Inconsistent Boundaries’, Synthese, 192(5) (2015), 1267–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, Dean W., ‘Could extended objects be made out of simpler parts? An argument for “atomless gunk”’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 56(1) (1996), 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar