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2005
Introduction: In this paper, I argue that a surprisingly widespread strategy in metaphysics is suspect for various reasons and hence ought to be abandoned. In very broad strokes, situations which give rise to ‘The Suspect Strategy’ (TSS) contain as one of their ingredients a general metaphysical...
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2004
Whenever an object constitutes, makes up or composes another object, the objects in question share a striking number of properties. This paper is addressed to the question of what might account for the intimate relation and striking similarity between constitutionally related objects. According...
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2005
This paper concerns a fundamental dispute in ontology between the “Foundational Ontologist”, who believes that there is only one correct way of characterizing what there is, and the ontological “Skeptic”, who believes that there are viable alternative characterizations of what there is. I examine...
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2003
Introduction: How do the familiar concrete objects of common-sense –houses, trees, people, cars and the like-- persist through time? According to the position known as ‘four-dimensionalism’ or ‘the doctrine of temporal parts’, ordinary concrete objects persist through time by perduring, i.e., by...
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2017-10-14
SSHRC Awarded IG 2018: Essences have traditionally been assigned important but controversial explanatory roles in philosophical, scientific and social theorizing. For example, why is it possible for one and the same organism to be first a caterpillar and then a butterfly? Why is it impossible for...
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2007
This paper provides a detailed examination of Kit Fine’s sizeable contribution to the development of a neo-Aristotelian alternative to standard mereology; I focus especially on the theory of ‘rigid’ and ‘variable embodiments’, as defended in Fine 1999. Section 2 briefly describes the system I...
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2003
Introduction: How do the familiar concrete objects of common-sense persist through time? The four- dimensionalist argues that they perdure, i.e., they persist through time by having temporal parts at each of the times at which they exist. The three-dimensionalist, on the other hand, holds that...