The Barest Flutter of the Smallest Leaf: Understanding Material Plenitude

Philosophical Review 128 (2):143-178 (2019)
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Abstract

According to material plenitude, every material object coincides with an abundance of other material objects that differ in the properties they have essentially and accidentally. Although this kind of plenitude is becoming increasingly popular, it isn't clear how to make sense of the view beyond its slogan form. As I argue, it turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to do so: straightforward attempts are either inconsistent or fail to capture the target idea. Making progress requires us to engage in more delicate metaphysics than we might have expected and, along the way, reveals substantive constraints on the material world. In this article, I argue that any attempt to develop a coherent version of plenitude is subject to two under-appreciated challenges, and I develop a version of plenitude (global plenitude) capable of overcoming both.

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Maegan Fairchild
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Citations of this work

Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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How to Be a Spacetime Substantivalist.Trevor Teitel - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (5):233-278.
Essence and Necessity.Andreas Ditter - 2022 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (3):653-690.
The Many-Subjects Argument against Physicalism.Brian Cutter - forthcoming - In Geoffrey Lee & Adam Pautz (eds.), The Importance of Being Conscious. Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Essence and modality.Kit Fine - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16.
Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time.Theodore Sider - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):642-647.
Material Beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Philosophy 67 (259):126-127.
Things and Their Parts.Kit Fine - 1999 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23 (1):61-74.

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