On Stage with Gunk

What it takes to be hunky

“…Moreover, many dialectically interesting appeals to gunk and junk have been made in the literature, with authors debating whether gunk defeats mereological nihilism (Sider ), priority pluralism (Bernstein, Forthcoming; Bohn, ; Giberman, ; Schaffer, ), and stage theory (Giberman, ; Stuchlik, ), and whether junk defeats mereological universalism (Bohn, , ; Contessa, ; Cotnoir, ; Giberman, ; Watson, ), PM (Bohn, ; Giberman, ; Tallant, ), and perdurantism (Giberman, ). Some of these debates have the potential to intertwine in philosophically important ways if hunk is metaphysically possible—all the more so if hunk plausibly is actual .…”

An Inconsistent Triad: Priority Pluralism, Perdurantism and (the Possibility of) Gunky Time

“…What the stage theorist should take from my argument then is that there is no Elric in Elric world, as there are no instantaneous temporal stages in such a world. As has been argued initially by Stuchlik () – and then later by Giberman () – gunky time worlds are incompatible with stage theory.…”

“…I must confess, however, I know of nobody in the present literature who explicitly accepts all three views. Both Stuchlik () and Giberman (, ), for instance, seem sympathetic towards temporal gunk, and think worm‐theoretic perdurantism is compatible with it; but Stuchlik (2003, p. 310) does not seem to think temporal parts are more fundamental than the objects they are parts of, and Giberman () has previously defended a view on fundamental particulars which would be compatible with priority pluralism being false (see n. 40). This might well be evidence that metaphysicians implicitly recognize the tension between the three views.…”

“…Though to be more precise, as Giberman () has shown, the stage theorist might have the resources to deal with temporal gunk by appealing to “shortish stages”; but only at the expense of causing trouble for the theory's semantics, such that it loses its advantages in counting objects over worm theory.…”