Can distinct objects occupy the same region at the same time?If someone has not been exposed to professional philosophy,they would very likely reply,“No!If a statue is already there,of course I can't put my cellp...Can distinct objects occupy the same region at the same time?If someone has not been exposed to professional philosophy,they would very likely reply,“No!If a statue is already there,of course I can't put my cellphone,or another identical statue in that region at the same time!”However,as is normally proposed in philosophical seminar,if the statue was created on Monday,and the piece of copper from which it was made was not created on Monday,by Leibniz's Law,one comes to the conclusion that the two objects are distinct,yet coincide,that is,occupy the same region,at some time.In what follows,Proponents of the view that coincident objects are identical will be called monists;and supporters of the position that coincidents are distinct will be called pluralists.In this paper,I will canvass Sosa's version of pluralism—‘explosionism'—and Burke's monism-‘the dominant-sortal theory'.In section 2,I will introduce Sosa's doctrine by showing what his argumentation is,how he disposes of‘the grounding problem',and how his thesis can be accommodated with our common-sense judgments.In section 3,I will present Burke's monism by displaying how his theory accounts for the identity relation of the coincident objects,and how he construes the persistence conditions that the only existing object in a given location has.My main purpose in this paper is to show that the explosionist thesis could raise a challenge to Burke's monism,and then to offer a possible solution to this challenge by resorting to conceptual relativism.These tasks will be pursued in section 4 and 5 respectively.展开更多
文摘Can distinct objects occupy the same region at the same time?If someone has not been exposed to professional philosophy,they would very likely reply,“No!If a statue is already there,of course I can't put my cellphone,or another identical statue in that region at the same time!”However,as is normally proposed in philosophical seminar,if the statue was created on Monday,and the piece of copper from which it was made was not created on Monday,by Leibniz's Law,one comes to the conclusion that the two objects are distinct,yet coincide,that is,occupy the same region,at some time.In what follows,Proponents of the view that coincident objects are identical will be called monists;and supporters of the position that coincidents are distinct will be called pluralists.In this paper,I will canvass Sosa's version of pluralism—‘explosionism'—and Burke's monism-‘the dominant-sortal theory'.In section 2,I will introduce Sosa's doctrine by showing what his argumentation is,how he disposes of‘the grounding problem',and how his thesis can be accommodated with our common-sense judgments.In section 3,I will present Burke's monism by displaying how his theory accounts for the identity relation of the coincident objects,and how he construes the persistence conditions that the only existing object in a given location has.My main purpose in this paper is to show that the explosionist thesis could raise a challenge to Burke's monism,and then to offer a possible solution to this challenge by resorting to conceptual relativism.These tasks will be pursued in section 4 and 5 respectively.
