A Sweater Unraveled: Following One Thread of Thought for Avoiding Coincident Entities
✍ Scribed by Alan Sidelle
- Book ID
- 108503852
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 119 KB
- Volume
- 32
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0029-4624
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Recent metaphysics has been much concerned with a number of puzzles and arguments in which the issue is raised of whether there can be more than one material object wholly occupying the same place at the same time-of whether, as it is often put, there can be coincident entities. Aside from direct discussion of whether or not coincidence is possible, and if so, whether this possibility is confined to entities of the different kinds, 1 it is also quite often taken for granted that it is not possible ~or at least, that we would like to avoid commitment to it if we could!, and this denial is used either as a premise in argument for metaphysical views, 2 or to more generally motivate positions, 3 or at any rate as one among other plausible looking views, the mutual inconsistency of which constitutes a puzzle requiring some revision of our ordinary views. 4 One such puzzle, which arguably deserves credit for first bringing contemporary attention to coincidence, is presented in David Wiggins'"On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time". 5 Actually, Wiggins didn't set out to present a puzzle, but rather an argument for coincidence. But since the premises in the argument and the negation of the conclusion all have a good deal of intuitive plausibility, it is useful to think of that set of sentences as constituting a puzzle which provides a particularly illuminating framework through which we can motivate and investigate a variety of ontological positions ~many interesting philosophical puzzles originated as arguments for the negation of one of the constituting claims; this is certainly so for most contemporary puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects!. Part of the great attraction and fecundity of focusing metaphysicians' attention on Wiggins' puzzle, and others like it, is the variety of different moves which jump out at one as potentially plausible lines of approach, each of which needs investigation to see whether it can be developed into an ultimately acceptable position. Each of the