47 research outputs found

    The Multi-location Trilemma

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    The possibility of multilocation --- of one entity having more than one exact location --- is required by several metaphysical theories such as the immanentist theory of universals and three-dimensionalism about persistence. One of the most pressing challenges for multi-location theorists is that of making sense of exact location --- in that extant definitions of exact location entail a principle called Functionality, according to which nothing can have more than one exact location. Recently in a number of promising papers, Antony Eagle has proposed and defended a definition of exact location in terms of weak location that does not entail Functionality. This paper provides the first thorough assessment of Eagle’s proposal. In particular, we argue that it cannot account for (i) location of immanent universals, (ii) multi-location of mereologically changing three-dimensional objects , (iii) multi-location of mereologically complex objects, and (iv) mereologically simple but extended objects

    Weak Priority Monism: A New Theory of the Fundamental

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    In this PhD dissertation, I am defending a new version of Priority Monism, which I call Weak Priority Monism: that the Cosmos is fundamental and is identical to the collective plurality of its proper parts. This distinguishes it from the version of Priority Monism defended by Jonathan Schaffer, in that, unlike him, I accept the thesis composition as identity. I argue that Weak Priority Monism is preferable to Schaffer’s monism as not only can all the arguments for his version of monism be also utilised by the weak priority monist, but they also have two decisive advantages over Schafferian Priority Monism (i.e. what I call Strong Priority Monism). Firstly, they are able to explain how the Cosmos can ground all its proper parts in ‘weak’ junky worlds; and secondly, they have a novel solution to the problem of heterogeneity which is superior to any solution available to Schaffer. In accepting composition as identity, however, Weak Priority Monism is a controversial view. It might be thought, for one, that composition as identity entails that the irreflexivity of grounding/dependence is violated: as if some things are identical to the mereological fusion they are grounded in, then it would seemingly be the case that those things grounded themselves. However, I will show that this is not necessarily the case, and that we can make sense of some plurality of things collectively grounding each of those things in the plurality, without it being the case that each of those things ground themselves. Indeed, as I shall argue, there is still a distinction between the fundamental and derivative, even if turns out that all the proper parts of the Cosmos taken collectively are fundamental. Weak Priority Monism then, as we shall see, is a promising new position on what is fundamental

    World Beats

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    This fascinating book explores Beat Generation writing from a transnational perspective, using the concept of worlding to place Beat literature in conversation with a far-reaching network of cultural and political formations. Countering the charge that the Beats abroad were at best naĂŻve tourists seeking exoticism for exoticism's sake, World Beats finds that these writers propelled a highly politicized agenda that sought to use the tools of the earlier avant-garde to undermine Cold War and postcolonial ideologies and offer a new vision of engaged literature. With fresh interpretations of central Beat authors Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs - as well as usually marginalized writers like Philip Lamantia, Ted Joans, and Brion Gysin - World Beats moves beyond national, continental, or hemispheric frames to show that embedded within Beat writing is an essential universality that brought America to the world and the world to American literature

    Not Another Brick in the Wall: an Extensional Mereology for Potential Parts

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    Part is not a univocal term. Uses of parthood and composition that do not obey any supplementation principle have a long philosophical tradition and strong support from contemporary physics. We call such uses potential parts. This paper first shows why potential parts are important and incompatible with supplementation, then provides a formal mereology for such parts inspired by the path-integral approach to quantum electrodynamics

    Not Another Brick in the Wall: an Extensional Mereology for Potential Parts

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    Part is not a univocal term. Uses of parthood and composition that do not obey any supplementation principle have a long philosophical tradition and strong support from contemporary physics. We call such uses potential parts. This paper first shows why potential parts are important and incompatible with supplementation, then provides a formal mereology for such parts inspired by the path-integral approach to quantum electrodynamics

    Being up for grabs: On speculative anarcheology

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    This is a book on the metaphysics of contingency. It looks at what could be otherwise, at what lacks the weight of necessity, at what is up for grabs. Aristotle maintained that there could be no knowledge of the impermanent. Since then, metaphysics has endeavored to find out what really is permanent, non-accidental and resilient – substances that endure, substrata underneath different qualities, fixed principles, necessary connections. In contrast, Bensusan draws on the growing philosophical attention to the contingent. It explores how we can counter Aristotle and develop a metaphysics of what ain’t necessarily so. The endeavor renegotiates the accepted familiarity between ontology and the search for an archĂ©. Being Up For Grabs explores this in connection to what is up in the air, what is out of the blue and what is up for grabs. It is a metaphysical exercise that dialogues with several philosophical resources. It is also a speculative and anarcheological effort, as it tries to reach a broad and encompassing view of the sensible world while conceiving it as lacking any archĂ©. The book emerges as an exercise in speculative anarcheology

    Wholeness and internal relatedness: a Bradleyan critique of recent holistic metaphysics

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    According to David Lewis’ influential thesis of Humean Supervenience, the world is a plurality of self-contained individuals standing in external relations of spatiotemporal distance. In the last decades, this thesis has been under attack by what I call ‘holistic ontologies’, the most salient of which are Dispositional Essentialism, Ontic Structural Realism, Priority Monism, and Existence Monism. These reactions obey different but closely related suspicions against the central features of Humean Supervenience. On one hand, there are suspicions against the idea of external relations; on the other hand, there are suspicions against the idea of self-contained plurals. Common to these holistic ontologies is to conceive the world not as an externally related heap but, in different degrees of strength, as an ‘internally related whole’. This work, following Bradley’s stance against relations, puts under critical scrutiny the merits of these holistic ontologies. The central aims are to make explicit the different senses of ‘wholeness’ and ‘internal relatedness’ that they happen to endorse; make explicit their internal flaws; and show the relative superiority of Existence Monism. As it happens, Existence Monism vindicates Bradley’s core ideas about relations, namely: that external relations are unable to relate; that internal relations are inherently unstable; and that all relations–external and internal–are better understood as imperfect abstractions from a more substantial, non-relational, kind of unity. I conclude with some skeptical remarks against my own metaphysical preferences and against ontology in general

    Narrative Immunities: The Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction

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    In this project I analyze the roles that notions of viruses and immunities and their figurations play within the narrative discourse of speculative fiction. Focusing on a series of texts from twentieth- and twenty-first century American fiction, I seek to examine the ways in which the dialectical confrontation between infection and immunity is explored, reified, or challenged on a narrative level. The terms “virus” and “immunity,” so intrinsic to life sciences, have come into use to describe specific micro-organisms and biological processes only within the last 150 years. Yet these terms possess a significantly longer history in political, legalistic, and philosophical discourses. As such, their use in describing biological activities is always, at some level, a cultivated form of narrative. Central to my discussion is what I call “narrative immunity,” the sense that the narrative perspective within a text acts as an immunizing factor against the threat of viral contamination. Narrative immunity is a way of constructing, within a literary world undergoing a cataclysmic structural event (as is often the case in the plots of viral outbreak), a space and identity of familiarity and recognition for the reader. As such, looking at how immunity and infection are narrated within fiction, I posit, allows us to gain an understanding of how discourses of biopolitics germinate and develop along narrative lines. Through a reading of Jack London, William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, and Colson Whitehead, I argue that narrative immunity may be deployed in a variety of ideological ways, and that it can support both reactionary impulses and radical liberatory projects. What I argue throughout is that an understanding of how viral infection and immune defense are encoded within the narrative logic of a text allows us a means of grasping the biopolitical constructivism that frequently informs cultural production

    NIHILIST PERDURANTISM: A NEW ONTOLOGY OF MATERIAL OBJECTS

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    Ordinary material objects, such as guitars and houses, do not seem to pose any serious philosophical problems. However, the nature of the material objects and their part-whole relation raises serious questions about fundamental ontologies. Furthermore, part-whole relations are not necessarily spatial; they can be temporal as well. My dissertation investigates the problems posed by ordinary material objects, and the different ontological views that attempt to provide answers to these problems. I then present a new and radical view, which I call Nihilist Perdurantism (NP). NP claims that objects have temporal parts, but not spatial parts. I arrive at this view by first exploring and arguing against different views on composition, with a focus on arguments against common sense ontologies of ordinary objects. I then discuss the nature of mereological simples and argue against several views that claim that qualitatively heterogeneous simples are possible (Markosian and McDaniel). Next, I present my arguments against perdurantist, endurantist, and presentist view of persistence. I especially focus on endurantism, and use the aforementioned argument against the possibility of qualitatively heterogeneous simples to construct a similar argument against endurantism. Finally, I argue in favor of my view, NP. This view combines a mereological nihilist view (defended at various times by Unger, Van Inwagen, Merricks, and Sider) about spatial parts with a perdurantist view (defended at various times by Lewis, Hawley, Heller, and Sider) of temporal parts. Therefore, according to NP, there are no guitars, trees, or houses. The only objects that exist are NP objects; these are line-shaped objects that extend through spacetime. With respect to the three spatial dimensions, these objects have no parts. However, with respect to the temporal dimension, NP objects do have parts in the form of points and line segments. My work shows that NP has better solutions to many of the puzzles and problems posed by material objects, such as the puzzle of change, over the three standard views. Hinchliff argues that change is puzzling because in order for there to be real change, then the following four intuitions must be true: (1) The candle persists through the change. It existed when it was straight, and it exists now when it is bent
(2) Shapes are properties not relations. They are one-placed, not many-placed
(3) The candle itself has the shapes. Not just a part but the candle itself was straight, and not just a part but the candle itself is bent
(4) The shapes are incompatible. If the shapes were compatible, there need not have been a change. The puzzle of change is the mutual inconsistency of these four intuitions. I argue that perdurantists must deny intuition (3), endurantists must deny intuition (2), and presentists must deny intuition (1). I then argue that only NP can accommodate all four intuitions about both macroscopic and microscopic change while resolving the inconsistency of the four intuitions. My dissertation presents a new view that provides a fresh perspective on the debate about the nature of material objects. My development of NP touches on a number of other philosophical problems. In Chapter One, I discuss the role of intuitions in metaphysics, and argue that many supposedly “common sense” intuitions are already philosophical positions. In Chapter 2, I argue against Korman’s and Markosian’s common sense ontologies of ordinary objects. In Chapter 3, I argue that the endurantist view of persistence is inconsistent and should be rejected. In addition to making the case for NP and its solution to the puzzle of change in Chapter 4, I also argue that NP can solve the problem of motion in a homogenous substance. Finally, in Chapter Five, I argue against the possibility of both gunky and junky material objects
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