Parthood

Abstract

First, a Digression: Expansion and ContractionThere will be a few themes. One to get us going: expansion versus contraction. About an object, o, and the region, R, of space(time) in which o is exactly located, 1 we may ask: i) must there exist expansions of o : objects in fi lled superregions 2 of R?ii) must there exist contractions of o : objects in fi lled subregions of R?Despite the apparent symmetry, entirely different considerations bear on each question. and Wisconsin. 1. Defi nitions: an object is exactly located in a region if and only if the region contains all and only the points in which the object is located (assume for simplicity that spacetime is atomic). A region is fi lled if and only if it has no empty points-no points in which no objects are located.2. = regions of which R is a subregion.

Explanation and Explanationism in Science and Metaphysics

“…In this account unification comes out, first of all, as one of several competing 31 See Swoyer (1999Swoyer ( , 2008, Armstrong 1997, pp. 235-6), andSider (2007), for example. Some regard the argument for genuine modal realism in Lewis (1986) also critically hinging on unification in a similar spirit.…”

“…Swoyer, a keen advocate of explanationism in metaphysics, engages in a contemporary debate on abstract objects with Dorr (Sider et al 2007). The two debaters largely agree on the methodology of their domain of enquiry: metaphysical theories are to be evaluated on their explanatory merits, where those merits are judged like the explanatory merits of scientific theories.…”

An Argument for the Ontological Innocence of Mereology

“…Lewis 1991, p. 87). Further difficulties for this line of argument are discussed in §3 of Sider (2007).…”

Monism, Emergence, and Plural Logic

“…In that way the composition as identity theorist can hold that emergent properties does not violate the principle of indiscernibility of identicals. McDaniel's argument from the possibility of emergent properties is thus 20 For references as well as a critical discussion of composition as identity, see Sider (2007a). 21 For another more interesting, but less scientific example of the possibility of emergent properties, see Prosser (2009).…”