Substantial change and spatiotemporal coincidence

Ratio

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 140-160

  Lowe, E J ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 58849122510     PISSN: 00340006     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9329.00212     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. See further my The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 158 and p. 171
2. See, for example, Michael B. Burke, 'Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper', Analysis 52 (1992), pp. 12-17
3. Dean W. Zimmerman, 'Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution', Philosophical Review 104 (1995), pp. 53-110
4. and Eric T. Olson, 'Composition and Coincidence', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77 (1996), pp. 374-403
5. See further David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), pp. 19-20
6. The locus classicus is P. T. Geach, Preference and Generality, 3rd edn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980): see p. 181
7. See further my Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 56ff
8. I express my own doubts about temporal-parts theories in my The Possibility of Metaphysics: see pp. 98ff, pp. 114ff and pp. 127ff
9. See, for example, Harold W. Noonan, 'Indeterminate Identity, Contingent Identity and Abelardian Predicates', Philosophical Quarterly 41 (1991), pp. 183-93
10. and 'Constitution is Identity', Mind 102 (1993), pp. 133-46
11. In point of fact, I do not myself believe that human persons or selves are composite beings: see my 'In Defence of the Simplicity Argument', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2000), pp. 105-12
12. and my 'Identity, Composition, and the Simplicity of the Self, in Kevin J. Corcoran (ed.), Soul, Body, and Survival (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). However, even if I am right, this does little to mitigate the paradoxical flavour of the claim that there are no composite objects
13. See, for example, Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 81ff
14. For discussion, see Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, Substance: Its Nature and Existence (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 179ff
15. See, for example, Paul Teller, 'Relativity, Relational Holism, and the Bell Inequalities', in J. Cushing and E. McMullin (eds), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989)
16. and Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 210-12
17. See Michael B. Burke, 'Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Among Objects, Sorts, Sortais, and Persistence Conditions', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994), pp. 591-624
18. I discuss Burke's view in my 'Coinciding Objects: In Defence of the "Standard Account" ', Analysis 55 (1995), pp. 171-8
19. I exclude as not remotely plausible André Gallois's 'Occasional Identity Thesis', according to which we may say that the statue and the lump of bronze are numerically identical while they exactly coincide but are numerically distinct at other times: see his Occasions of Identity: The Metaphysics of Persistence, Change, and Sameness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
20. I raise some objections against Gallois's view in my review of his book, Mind 109 (2000), pp. 354-7
21. I am in fact doubtful about the distinction that is standardly drawn between 'dispositional' and 'categorical' properties: see my 'Dispositions and Laws', Metaphysica 2 (2001), pp. 5-23. But I set aside such doubts for present purposes. In any case, the account of the ontological ground of dispositions that I favour reinforces, if anything, the position defended in the present paper
22. See further my The Possibility of Metaphysics, pp. 198-9
23. A similar point is made by Sydney Shoemaker in his 'Self and Body', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 78 (1999), pp. 287-306: see pp. 297ff
24. However, Shoemaker makes the point in the course of defending the view that a human person is constituted by his or her body, which is a view of embodiment that I reject: see my 'Identity, Composition, and the Simplicity of the Self'
25. See, for example, Christopher Hughes, 'Same-Kind Coincidence and the Ship of Theseus', Mind 106 (1997), pp. 53-67
26. My sympathies lie, then, with the position of David S. Oderberg, 'Coincidence under a Sortal', Philosophical Review 105 (1996), pp. 145-71
27. See, for example, Zimmerman, 'Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution', pp. 87ff
28. More recently, Zimmerman has come to doubt the force of the objection: see his 'Criteria of Identity and the "Identity Mystics" ', Erkenntnis 48 (1998), pp. 281-301, especially pp. 293-4
29. See David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance, pp. 30ff
30. See further my 'In Defence of the Simplicity Argument' and my 'Identity, Composition, and the Simplicity of the Self
31. Judith Jarvis Thomson offers a different and much more complicated definition of the constitution relation in her 'The Statue and the Clay', Nous 32 (1998), pp. 149-73: see pp. 155ff. However, she makes it part of her definition - quite implausibly and unnecessarily, to my mind - that if x constitutes y at t, then x is part of y at t and y is part of x at t
32. For earlier discussions of this and similar problems, see Harold W. Noonan, Objects and Identity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), pp. 22ff
33. my Kinds of Being, pp. 84ff
34. and Michael B. Burke, 'Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle', Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994), pp. 129-39
35. For doubts about the existence of objects such as Tib, see Peter van Inwagen, 'The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1981), pp. 123-37
36. This is Burke's solution in his 'Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle'
37. This is van Inwagen's solution in his 'The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts'