A Plea for Things That Are Not Quite All There: Or, Is There a Problem about Vague Composition and Vague Existence?

Smith, Nicholas J. J.

doi:10.5840/jphil2005102816

Cited by 28 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…My treatment of mereological vagueness has much in common with the supervaluationism of Fine (1975). It is compatible with a linguistic understanding of mereological vagueness and offers an alternative to the multiple-degree treatments of mereological vagueness developed in van Inwagen (1981) and Smith (2005).…”

Section: (*)mentioning

confidence: 86%

“…This plurality of pairwise discrete objects sums to Tibbles (or a part of Tibbles) if and only if CARB is part of Tibbles and, according to common sense, composes nothing when CARB is not part of Tibbles. 14 As his support for (*), Smith (2005) presents an example of three teacups. According to Smith, it is indeterminate whether the cups compose an object only if there is an indeterminately existing object, Cup, which the cups (indeterminately?)…”

Section: Mereology For Endurantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In philosophical literature, the focus is typically on a particular form of mereological vagueness-compositional vagueness, where this is understood as indeterminacy in which pluralities of objects compose objects. 3 Lewis (1986), Sider (2001), and Smith (2005) (and perhaps also van Inwagen 1981) all seem to assume that the following claim holds:…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

“…(1981), Lewis (1986), Sider (2001), Morreau (2002), Hawley (2002), Koslicki (2003), Smith (2005), and Merricks (2005). In much of this literature, mereological vagueness is rejected because it is supposed to bring along with it a commitment to existential vagueness and this later doctrine is held to be incoherent.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…In much of this literature, mereological vagueness is rejected because it is supposed to bring along with it a commitment to existential vagueness and this later doctrine is held to be incoherent. Even where mereological vagueness is treated sympathetically in van Inwagen (1981), Koslicki (2003), and Smith (2005), it is assumed that mereological vagueness goes hand in hand with existential vagueness. With just one exception that I know of (Morreau (2002)), no philosopher has explicitly endorsed mereological vagueness without also endorsing existential vagueness.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Mereological vagueness and existential vagueness

Donnelly

2008

Synthese

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It is often assumed that indeterminacy in mereological relations-in particular, indeterminacy in which collections of objects have fusions-leads immediately to indeterminacy in what objects there are in the world. This assumption is generally taken as a reason for rejecting mereological vagueness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between mereological vagueness and existential vagueness. I hope to show that the connection between the two forms of vagueness is not nearly so clear-cut as has been supposed.

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Section: (*)mentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Mereology For Endurantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 90%

mentioning

confidence: 95%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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