Moderate Monism, Sortal Concepts, and Relative Identity

Noonan, Harold W.

doi:10.5840/monist20139616

Cited by 1 publication

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References 23 publications

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“…10 An argument along these lines was originally presented by Stone (2005), and discussed in Mackie (2007), where I describe the argument as proposing a 'modal dilemma' for the contingent identity theorist. For further discussion, see Noonan (2008Noonan ( , 2013. 11 Noonan (2013, pp.…”

Section: The Explanation Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This position has also been referred to as 'moderate monism' byNoonan (2008Noonan ( , 2013, as 'strictly moderate monism' byFine (2003, pp. 198-199), and as 'intermediate monism'(Mackie 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Noonan (2008Noonan ( , 2013 uses this response to what I have called 'the explanation argument' to defend the contingent identity theory (or what he terms 'moderate monism') against the objection that it cannot give an adequate explanation, in modal terms, of why a statue goes out of existence when it is radically reshaped although the piece of clay with which it temporarily coincides does not. However, Noonan's response does not require the adoption of the contingent identity theory.…”

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Persistence and modality

Mackie

2018

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It seems plausible to say that what changes an entity can or cannot survive depends on its persistence conditions, and that these depend, in turn, on its sortal kind. It might seem to follow that an entity cannot belong to two sortal kinds with potentially conflicting persistence conditions. Notoriously, though, this conclusion is denied by 'contingent identity' theorists, who hold, for example, that a permanently coincident statue and piece of clay are identical, although the persistence conditions associated with the kinds statue and piece of clay are potentially conflicting. A clash with Leibniz's Law is avoided by treating modal predicates as what Harold Noonan has called 'Abelardian predicates', as in the version of 'inconstant' counterpart theory developed by David Lewis. In addition to other difficulties, however, there is a question whether this 'Abelardian' theory does justice to the intuitions expressed in such statements as that the piece of clay could, while the statue could not, have survived a radical reshaping of its matter. I present an argument, which I call 'the vacuous satisfaction argument', for the conclusion that the theory does indeed fail to capture the significance of such de re modal statements.

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