Description
TitleBackwaters of ontology
Date Created2014
Other Date2014-10 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (x, 253 p.)
DescriptionThe goal of the present work is to explore a wide variety of answers to the so-called special composition question (hereafter SCQ), which asks, given some things, the Xs, when is it that the Xs are some one thing, rather than many? For instance, given some pieces of wood, e.g., the wood (and perhaps other materials things like epoxy) compose a canoe? As with the aforementioned cases, it seems obvious that sometimes, e.g., some lumber composes a fence, some molecules compose an organism, or some quantities of alcohol compose a martini. In other situations, it seems questionable whether there is anything one could do to make some things compose another thing. For instance, is there anything one could do to make two persons and an apple pie compose one thing, some single thing such that it is two parts person and one part pie? As a rather famous example of the latter “strange kind,” David Lewis postulates “fusions” of such disparate and heterogeneous things as “trout-turkeys,” composed of the front half of a turkey and back half of a trout. The previous illustrations are all cases in which we can ask, when do some things become one whole, and is there a general and uniform answer to be searched for? There are three standard answers in “material object metaphysics” that philosophers have thought have some promise in answering the SCQ: sometimes, always, and never. The present work examines each of these answers, and some variants thereof, in detail. One of my primary aims is to sort the tenable answers from the untenable ones. In each chapter, I provide a general statement of the view, its alleged advantages and disadvantages, and then evaluate the cogency of arguments in favor of those allegations. In Chapter six, I argue that noncontingentism regarding existential statements about when composition occurs have often ended in stalemates. I recommend that the relevant kind of contingentism, along with an empirically informed metaphysics, will better serve those wanting to know when composition occurs, if at all, in our world.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Janelle Derstine
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.