Dear all,
This Thursday, Serious Metaphysics returns with Carlo Rossi's talk entitled 'Endurance and Identity'. (Abstract below) As usual, 1.00-2.30pm at the philosophy faculty board room. Feel free to bring lunch along. Hope to see you there, Li Li Abstract The received view about endurance theory holds that material things persist by being wholly present at every time of their existence (Lewis 1986, Johnston 1988, Zimmerman 1996). But for some time now there has been a growing discontent with the received view. Take the notion of being wholly present. Even though the use of this notion is pervasive in the debate, it has so many different meanings that it is difficult to find one that fits to all the contexts in which this philosophical idiom is uttered (Sider 2001, Crisp and Smith 2005). Moreover, some have even gone beyond complaints of ambiguity, deeming the notion as utterly incoherent (Hofweber and Velleman 2011). The aim of this presentation is to examine a proposal that departs from the endurance orthodoxy. This proposal, which I label the Identity account, has been entertained by Hawley (2008) and Hawthorne (2008), but more thoroughly developed by Hofweber and Velleman (2011). In a nutshell, the theory claims that for endurantists, the identity of a persisting thing is an intrinsic fact of the spatial regions that such thing occupies at different times. I divide this presentation in three main sections. In the first section I offer some motivations for the Identity theory, plus discussing some of the background assumptions on parthood and location that govern the subsequent argument. Once the motivation and background assumptions are in place, in the second section I introduce the theory itself. Lastly, in the third section I lay down my criticism to the view. Even though I feel sympathetic to some of the intuitions the theory captures, I argue that it delivers an often circular, impoverished, and restricted picture of endurance theory. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
