One's a Crowd: Mereological Nihilism without Ordinary-Object Eliminativism

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Contessa
Synthese ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 191 (7) ◽  
pp. 1511-1527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Tallant

Author(s):  
John William Evans

Certain optical properties of crystals, and more particularly the refractive index, may be determined either in the directions-image, often referred to as the 'image in convergent light', or in the ordinary object-image in which the object itself is seen. In the former case, in which the index of refraction is 'usually determined by means of the critical angle of total-reflection, every point in the image corresponds to a single direction of propagation of the wave-front through the crystal-structure and to the two corresponding directions of vibration. One of these can, however, be eliminated by the insertion of a nicol in an approximate position, and thus all ambiguity in the determination of the refractive index is removed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Bagwell

Eliminativists sometimes invoke evolutionary debunking arguments against ordinary object beliefs, either to help them establish object skepticism or to soften the appeal of commonsense ontology. I argue that object debunkers face a self-defeat problem: their conclusion undermines the scientific support for one of their premises, because evolutionary biology depends on our object beliefs. Using work on reductionism and multiple realizability from the philosophy of science, I argue that it will not suffice for an eliminativist debunker to simply appeal to some object-free surrogate theory of evolution that results from converting any scientific proposition about some object K into a proposition about simples arranged K-wise. In the process, I examine some hazards peculiar to eliminative reductions of scientific theories, and propose a trilemma for eliminativists who attempt to recoup generality for ontologically sparse reducing theories by appealing to pluralities of simples arranged K-wise. The paper is intended to define and develop the object debunker’s self-defeat problem for further study, and to clarify some of the ways sparse and abundant ontologies interact with scientific theory.


Metaphysica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-113
Author(s):  
Fabio Patrone

AbstractPixelism is the combination of three metaphysical thesis, namely a radical form of exdurantism, mereological nihilism and counterpart theory. Pixelism is a theory that evaluates all the metaphysical phenomena of persistence, composition and modality in a homogeneous and consistent manner. In a pixel world, there is no identity over time and over possible worlds and nothing persists over more than an instant or a world. Entities can be univocally identified by a five-coordinates system (the three spatial dimensions, the temporal one and the possible worlds), and their relation is a counterpart relation both in different worlds and at different times or different regions of space. In this paper I will provide two models for pixelism: the first one takes pixels to be hypercubes, i. e. four-dimensional cubes, the acceptance of which is conditional on the acceptance of extended simples. The second one considers pixels as points in a four-dimensional space.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101-124
Author(s):  
William J. Talbott

In Chapter 5, the author uses the clues from previous chapters to begin the construction of a theory of epistemic rationality in which mistake-correcting reasoning is the paradigm for reasoning. On his account, cognitive models are composed of scenarios, which are themselves sets of propositions that have expectations for experience. Models are tested not by propositions describing experience but by experiences themselves because scenarios holistically generate expectations for experience which the agent’s actual experience can either satisfy or fail to satisfy. On the author’s theory, only scenarios with full or partial necessitation hypotheses can earn rational confidence. He identifies two main conceptual frameworks, the ordinary object framework and the person framework, both of which are causal frameworks. The imagination plays a crucial role in rationality in the author’s theory. He ends with informal statements of two principles of epistemic rationality, of which the formal versions are stated in Appendix A.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Sattig

This Element is a survey of central topics in the metaphysics of material objects. The topics are grouped into four problem spaces. The first concerns how an object's parts are related to the object's existence and to the object's nature, or essence. The second concerns how an object persists through time, how an object is located in spacetime, and how an object changes. The third concerns paradoxes about objects, including paradoxes of coincidence, paradoxes of fission, and the problem of the many. The fourth concerns views with radical consequences regarding the existence of composite material objects, including mereological nihilism, ontological anti-realism, and deflationism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 524
Author(s):  
Hasan Sankır

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>All products in the art field have a cultural character and reflect the characteristics of the social space in which they are situated. Objects have no meaning in their own rights and all objects, including art objects, acquire its meaning through social construction. In this respect, the meaning of artwork is symbolic and conceptual. The purpose of this work is to reveal how and by what conditions ordinary objects are transformed into artworks by artists. It is aimed to determine which social mechanisms take place in the process of artistic transformation of objects and what the role of social space and artists is in the construction and operation of these mechanisms. For this purpose, the study is composed of two parts. In the first part, how social context of an artwork is being constructed and according to this context how an object and space acquire artistic meaning have been set forth through semiotics approach. In the second part, an approach to the artistic transformation of an ordinary object through the role of artist and construction of social context with the examples selected from the art history have been put forward. In this section, the "bed" was chosen as the ordinary object and a discussion was made about the transformation process of the bed into a work of art through the work of Tracy Emin's "My Bed". As a result of the study, it was understood that ordinary objects have their own unique cultural spaces, and that they have an active role in the social context in which these objects have their meaning. Through the action of the artist towards an artistic goal, it has been specified that at the end of processes such as the removal of an ordinary object from the cultural space and its isolation from its functions, it is possible to change its social context and corresponding meaning. After this process, it has become possible to evaluate the object as an art work with the expansion of its meaning by turning it into an indicator.</p><p><strong>Öz</strong></p><p>Sanat alanındaki tüm üretimler kültürel bir nitelik taşır ve içerisinde yer aldığı sosyal alanın karakteristiklerini yansıtırlar. Nesnelerin kendi başına anlamları yoktur ve sanat nesneleri de dahil her türlü nesne anlamını toplumsal inşa süreciyle kazanır. Bu bakımdan sanat eserinin anlamı sembolik ve kavramsaldır. Bu çalışmanın amacı sıradan nesnelerin sanatçılar tarafından sanat eserine nasıl ve hangi koşullarda dönüştürüldüğünün ortaya konmasıdır. Nesnelerin sanatsal dönüşümü sürecinde hangi sosyal mekanizmaların yer aldığı ve bu mekanizmaların inşası ve işleyişinde sosyal mekânın ve sanatçının rolünün ne olduğunun belirlenmesine yöneliktir. Bu amaçla çalışma iki kısma ayrılmıştır. Birinci kısımda sanat alanında bir nesnenin sosyal bağlamının nasıl inşa edildiği ve bu bağlama göre nesnenin ve mekânın nasıl sanatsal bir anlam kazandığı göstergebilim yaklaşımı üzerinden ortaya konulmuştur. İkinci kısımda ise sanat tarihinden seçilen örneklerle sosyal bağlamın inşası ve sanatçının rolü üzerinden sıradan bir nesnenin sanatsal dönüşümüne yönelik bir yaklaşım ortaya konulmuştur. Bu kısımda sıradan nesne olarak “yatak” seçilmiş ve Tracy Emin’ in “My Bed” (benim yatağım) isimli çalışması üzerinden yatağın sanat eserine dönüşüm sürecine yönelik bir tartışma gerçekleştirilmiştir. Çalışmanın sonucunda sıradan nesnelerin kendilerine özgü kültürel mekânlarının olduğu ve bu mekânların nesnelere yönelik anlamın ortaya çıkmasını sağlayan sosyal bağlamın inşasında etkin bir role sahip olduğu anlaşılmıştır. Sanatsal bir hedefe yönelmiş olan sanatçının eylemselliği aracılığıyla sıradan bir nesnenin kültürel mekânı dışına çıkartılması ve işlevlerinden soyutlanması gibi süreçler sonucunda sosyal bağlamının ve buna bağlı olarak anlamının değiştirilmesinin mümkün olduğu belirlenmiştir. Bu süreç sonrasında nesnenin göstergeye dönüşerek anlamının genişlemesiyle birlikte sanat yapıtı olarak değerlendirilmesinin imkanlı hale geldiği görülmüştür.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 79-80
Author(s):  
J. Progler

In a teacher education class, students were asked to analyze a standard classroom desk-chair to see how “an ordinary object contained within it an array of social and political relations.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-125
Author(s):  
Nikola Stamenkovic

In Writing the Book of the World (2011) Theodore Sider claims that on the fundamental level of reality there are no objects composed of parts, which makes his view a version of mereological nihilism. However, in his previous book entitled Four-Dimensionalism (2001), Sider endorses mereological universalism, the thesis that every class of objects has a mereological fusion, i.e. that there exists an additional object containing those objects as parts, which plays a crucial role in his argument from vagueness in favour of perdurantism, that is the thesis of the existence of temporal parts of material objects. In this paper I will investigate whether Sider can still be a perdurantist in spite of his latest commitment to mereological nihilism.


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