Mental fictionalism maintains that: (1) folk psychology is a false theory, but (2) we should nonetheless keep using it, because it is useful, convenient, or otherwise beneficial to do so. We should (or do) treat folk psychology as a useful fiction-false, but valuable. Yet some argue that mental fictionalism is incoherent: if a mental fictionalist rejects folk psychology then she cannot appeal to fictions in an effort to keep folk psychological discourse around, because fictions presuppose the legitimacy of folk psychology. Call this the Argument from Cognitive Collapse. In this paper, I defend several different mental fictionalist views against cognitive collapse.
It has been argued by some that the argument from vagueness is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the theory of temporal parts. I will neither support nor dispute this claim here. Rather, I will present a version of the argument from vagueness, which – if successful – commits one to the existence of modal parts. I argue that a commitment to the soundness of the argument from vagueness for temporal parts compels one to commit to the soundness of the argument from vagueness for modal parts. I say compels, but not entails; an objection to one of the arguments highlights analogous ways to reject the other, making it difficult (but not impossible) to endorse one and reject the other. This would be a significant conclusion, if true, since there are far fewer (if any) who currently commit themselves to modal parts than the many who currently commit themselves to temporal parts (and who do so in part because of the argument from vagueness).
A lump theorist claims that ordinary objects are spread out across possible worlds, much like many of us think that tables are spread out across space. We are not wholly located in any one particular world, the lump theorist claims, just as we are not wholly spatially located where one's hand is. We are modally spread out, a trans-world mereological sum of world-bound parts. We are lump sums of modal parts. And so are all other ordinary objects. In this paper, I explore lump theory and investigate five arguments against it. These arguments may be the primary reasons why lump theory (as envisioned here) has not been widely accepted--or extensively explored--until now. I maintain that these arguments can be answered, and moreover, that accepting lump theory has distinct advantages, making it a competitive view in its own right.1 Lump theory is just one way of embracing modal parts. Lewis (1986Lewis ( , 1993 accepts modal parts -and trans-world sums of modal parts-but he does not think that such objects are metaphysically interesting or relevant. (See below for an elaboration on how our views differ.) L. A. Paul (2002) andKris McDaniel (2004) argue for distinct views, each of which may be considered a 'modal parts' view, in virtue of the fact that individuals (on Paul's view) have modal properties as parts, or because individuals (on McDaniel's view) wholly exist in more than one possible world. Paul's and McDaniel's views differ from the one I am endorsing here, however, which is discussed in Brian Weatherson ms (n.d.) and(2003), andDavid Kaplan (1979).
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