[SydPhil] Current Projects: Michael Duncan On Composite Objects and Their Properties

[Kristie Miller]

Next Thursday’s curent projects seminar (3.00 in the Muniment room) will be Michael Duncan who will be presenting: 

Title: On Composite Objects and Their Properties

The orthodox view of composition has it that composite objects are numerically distinct from the objects that compose them, taken together or separately. The rival view – composition as identity – says that composite objects are numerically identical to the objects that compose them, taken together. Thus, a chair is, on this view, identical to some atoms arranged in the shape of a chair. I will argue that accepting the orthodox view is more costly than it may initially seem. Unlike composition as identity, it requires giving up on a natural and seemingly widely held view about what I will call “heterogeneous properties”: properties like being black and white, and being polka-dotted. Furthermore, all of the known alternatives to that view face serious difficulties.

All are welcome, to hope to see you all there.




Associate Professor Kristie Miller
Senior ARC Research Fellow
Joint Director, the Centre for Time
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room S212, A 14

kmiller at usyd.edu.au
kristie_miller at yahoo.com
Ph: +612 9036 9663
http://www.kristiemiller.net/KristieMiller2/Home_Page.html

















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