Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Younger Scholar Prize Announcement I. FINDING THE FUNDAMENTAL 1. Naturalness 2. Fundamental Properties of Fundamental Properties 3. Absolutism vs. Comparativism about Quantity II. ONTOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS: WORDS AND SLOTS 4. Modal Quantification without Worlds 5. Slots in Universals III. MEREOLOGY 6. Against Parthood 7. Composition as General Identity 8. Cut the Pie Any Way You Like? Cotnoir on General Identity IV. THE A-THEORY OF TIME 9. Living on the Brink, or Welcome Back, Growing Block! 10. Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami 11. Changing Truthmakers: Reply to Tallant and Ingram

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The doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics

(1996). All the world's a stage. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 433-453.

http://tedsider.org/papers/all_the_worlds_a_stage.pdf

All the world's a stage

This paper is about the neglected question of what sort of things we are metaphysically speaking. It is different from the mind-body problem and from familiar questions of personal identity. After explaining what the question means and how it differs from oth- ers,thepapertriestoshowhowdifficultitistogiveasatisfyinganswer. 1. The Question What are we? That is, what are we metaphysically speaking? What is our basic metaphysical nature? What are our most general and funda- mental properties? I claim that this is a real and important question. It is different from the traditional mind-body problem and from familiar questions of personal identity. It is frequently neglected. And it is fiendishly difficult to answer. Let me first explain what the question means. I won't try to define the daunting phrases 'basic metaphysical nature'or 'most general and fundamental properties'. (I doubt whether that would be a worthwhile project.) I will try to explain what I mean by example. We can break the large question of what we are into a number of smaller and more specific ones. What are we made of? I don't mean our chemical composition — what sort of physical matter makes us up. I want to know whether we aremadeof matter atall.Or arewemadeof something other than mat- ter? Orpartlyofmatterandpartlyofsomethingelse? Cometothat,are wemadeofanythingatall? Isthereanysortofstuff,materialorother- wise, that makes us up? If we are indeed made of matter or of anything else, what matter or other stuff makes us up? Most materialists — those who think we are

background

What are we

There is a well-known argument from Leibniz’s Law for the view that coincident material things may be distinct. For given that they differ in their properties, then how can they be the same? However, many philosophers have suggested that this apparent difference in properties is the product of a linguistic illusion; there is just one thing out there, but different sorts or guises under which it may be described. I attempt to show that this ‘opacity’ defence has intolerable consequences for the functioning of our language and that the original argument should therefore be allowed to stand.

The Non‐Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter

What is the relation between material objects and spacetime regions? Supposing that spacetime regions are one sort of substance, there remains the question of whether or not material objects are a second sort of substance. This is the question of dualistic versus monistic substantivalism. I will defend the monistic view. In particular, I will maintain that material objects should be identified with spacetime regions. There is the spacetime manifold, and the fundamental properties are pinned directly to it.

/pdf/spacetime-the-one-substance-idyrhekbb0.pdf

The doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts

Citations

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics

All the world's a stage

What are we

The Non‐Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter

Spacetime the one substance

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