Statues and Lumps: A Strange Coincidence?

Abstract

Puzzles about persistence and change through time, i.e., about identity across time, have foundered on confusion about what it is for 'two things' to be have 'the same thing' at a time. This is most directly seen in the dispute over whether material objects can occupy exactly the same place at the same time. This paper defends the possibility of such coincidence against several arguments to the contrary. Distinguishing a temporally relative from an absolute sense of 'the same', we see that the intuition, 'this is only one thing', and the dictum, 'two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time', are individuating things at a time rather than absolutely and are therefore compatible with coincidence. Several other objections philosophers have raised ride on this same ambiguity.Burke, originating what has become the most popular objection to coincidence, argues that if coincidence is possible there would be no explanation of how objects that are qualitatively the same at a time could belong to different sorts. But we can explain an object's sort by appealing to its properties at other times. Burke's argument to the contrary equivocates on different notions of 'cross-time identity' and 'the statue'. From a largely negative series of arguments emerges a positive picture of what it means to say multiple things coincide and of why an object's historical properties explain its sort rather than vice versa -in short, of how coincidence is possible. Synthese (2006) 148: 401-423

It’s All in your Head: a Solution to the Problem of Object Coincidence

“…2 Some, mereological nihilists, deny both the lump and the statue exist. 3 Some claim "statue" is 1 Two-thingers-those who embrace coincidence-as Stephen Yablo and Karen Bennett call them, include Baker (2000); Tho masson (2007a, 73-86); Hughes (1997); Lowe (2003); Fine (2003); Moyer (2006); Thomson (1998); Sutton (2012); Doepke (1992); Johnston (1992;2006, 664-7); and Crane (2012). See notes 2-6 for so me representatives of the "one-thinger" camp.…”

Mereological Nihilism and Puzzles about Material Objects

“…The genesis of ‘gollyswoggle’ is van Inwagen, , p. 126. For objections to van Inwagen's argument, see Moyer, , §4. For discussions of arbitrariness arguments, see many of the papers in Hawthorne, – in particular ‘Plenitude, Convention, and Ontology’.…”

The Meta‐Problem of Change

“…16 16 Thanks to Mark Moyer for pointing out to me that the notion of a property being intrinsic to a time, or a basically equivalent notion, also occurs in Chisholm, Simons, and Moyer, see (Moyer, 2004), and Perry, see (Perry, 1972), although not in connection with the endurance—perdurance distinction. …”