Fission, fusion and intrinsic facts

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3):602-621 (2005)
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Abstract

Closest-continuer or best-candidate accounts of persistence seem deeply unsatisfactory, but it’s hard to say why. The standard criticism is that such accounts violate the ‘only a and b’ rule, but this criticism merely highlights a feature of the accounts without explaining why the feature is unacceptable. Another concern is that such accounts violate some principle about the supervenience of persistence facts upon local or intrinsic facts. But, again, we do not seem to have an independent justification for this supervenience claim. Instead, I argue that closest continuer accounts are committed to unexplained correlations between distinct existences, and that this is their fundamental flaw. We can have independent justification for rejecting such correlations, but what the justification is depends upon much broader issues in ontology. There is no one-size-fits all objection to closest-continuer accounts of persistence

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Katherine Hawley
PhD: Cambridge University; Last affiliation: University of St. Andrews

Citations of this work

The fundamental and the brute.Ralf Bader - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1121-1142.
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Part‐Intrinsicality.J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - Noûs 47 (3):431-452.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.

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