This article offers a novel solution to the problem of material constitution: by including non-concrete objects among the parts of material objects, we can avoid having a statue and its constituent piece of clay composed of all the same proper parts. Non-concrete objects-objects that aren't concrete, but possibly are-have been used (by Bernard Linsky, Ed Zalta and Timothy Williamson) in defense of the claim that everything necessarily exists. But the account offered shows that non-concreta are independently useful in other domains as well. The resulting view falls under a 'non-material partist' class of views that includes, in particular, Laurie Paul's and Kathrin Koslicki's constitution views; ones where material objects have properties or structures as parts respectively. The article gives reasons for preferring the nonconcretist solution over these other non-material partist views and defends it against objections.
The Zhuangzi 莊子 depicts persons as surviving their deaths through the natural transformations of the world into very different forms-such as roosters, cart-wheels, rat livers, etc. It's common to interpret these passages metaphorically.But in this paper, I suggest employing a "Conventionalist" view of persons that says whether a person survives some event is not merely determined by the world, but is partly determined by our own attitudes. On this reading, Zhuangzi's many teachings urging us to embrace transformation are not merely a psychological aid for dealing with death, but also serve as a tool for literally surviving it.
Presentism says that only present objects exist (timelessly). But the view has trouble grounding past-tensed truths like "dinosaurs existed". Standard Eternalism grounds those truths by positing the (timeless) existence of past objects-like dinosaurs. But Standard Eternalism conflicts with the intuition that there is genuine change-the intuition that there once were dinosaurs and no longer are any. By drawing from the resources of Einstein's General Relativity, I offer a novel theory of time that does a better job preserving both the grounding and genuine change intuitions. The theory says that the past and present exist (in the timeless sense), but where the present exhibits mass--energy, the past only consists of curved empty regions of spacetime. We therefore avoid saying that there are dinosaurs, since there is no mass--energy in the past; but the curvature of the past gives us a way to ground the truth that "dinosaurs existed".
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.