In his work Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (2001 as cited in Koslicki, 2003; 107), Sider offers an “argument from vagueness,” which is concerned with the question: “Under what conditions do objects come into and go out of existence,” or “Which arrangements of matter are suitable for objects to come into (and go out of) existence?” (Koslicki, 2003; 112). In his answer which allegedly proves universalism, Sider believes this can be extended to spatiotemporal dimension and hence Four-Dimensionalism. The structure of the essay is as follows: first I will consider the possible solutions to the question posed above. Second, I will reiterate Sider’s argument and how it attempts to answers the question. Thirdly, I will consider the position known as the “intermediate” position, using Koslicki’s criticism to Sider to demonstrate my point. Finally, I will attempt to critique the areas that Koslicki grants Sider in a defense of the nihilistic position. Thus in this essay, I will attempt to evaluate the argument from vagueness for the four-dimensionalist metaphysics of material objects and following Koslicki, argue that the non-temporalized argument does not fare as well as Sider claims. Hence, the dependent temporalized argument fares similarly.
I argue that there are three solutions to the question “Under what conditions do objects come into and go out of existence:
S1: Under all conditions (Sider’s view which is referred to as universalism).
S2: Under some conditions (Intermediate).
S3: Under no conditions (Nihilism).
The argument posited by Sider (S1) can be seen as an argument by elimination, where the premises if accepted, reject the possibility of S2 and S3. As such, the argument suffers from whether the re...
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...iticisms can be applied (120). Koslicki does consider whether or not Sider’s argument entails four-dimensionalism, and comes to the conclusion that it does not since a three-dimensionalist can accept the conclusion, but remain a three-dimensionalist (121-122). A similar argument cannot be made for nihilist since fusion is done away, although one could make the argument of a simple at each particular time, rather than an object.
As such, I believe that I have provided potential alternatives to the question that the argument from vagueness attempts to solve. While the arguments that I have provided for the alternatives are prone to errors, the goal is to show that it is possible to entertain such alternatives as opposed to accepting universalism, and hence four-dimensionalism. As the non-temporal argument suffers from this weakness, so too does the temporal one.
The intricacy of a simple time telling device has sparked controversy about the creation of the universe. In William Paley’s “The Analogical Teleological Argument” he argues that the universe must have been created by a universe maker, God, due to its complexity. However, David Hume, provides an empiricist objection by arguing that one cannot prove the existence of a universe maker due to lack of experience regarding the creation of a universe. Ultimately, I will argue that Paley’s argument by design is not sufficient for proving God 's existence because, as individuals, we cannot assume that the world works the way we wish it.
In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of Aristotle’s argument from Physics Book 2, chapter 8, 199a9. Aristotle in this chapter tries to make an analogy between nature and action to establish that both, nature and action, have an end.
... middle of paper ... ... Everything is basically relative and is what each separate person perceives it to be, just like the answers to the infinite questions posed by The Turn of the Screw. Works Cited Burrows, Stuart.
Premise (2) states we have good reason to think that nothing is nonphysical and that on the contrary everything is physical – that everything can be physically described and explained. All the cases in the history of science in which nonphysical explanations failed and physical explanations succeeded provide some reason – perhaps very strong reason – to think all future cases will follow the same pattern, but these reasons are not decisive. Therefore, we have good reason to think that physicalism is
Before I say what is wrong with the argument, I want to explain the bridge objection. In “Theory and Reality,” G-S presents the bridge problem, which is a response to Popper made by inductivist’s. I chose to explain this...
American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1984): 227-36.
, The debate between free will and fatalism has existed since the conceptualization of time. On one hand, in everyday life, time flows in a uniform fashion. People experience time in which there is a past, present, and a future. Yet, physicists and philosophers see time as something completely different. In fact, they see time as an illusion. Called the tenseless theory of time, time does not flow but this theory views time as a fourth dimension where all past, present, and future events are equal (Callender & Edney, 2004). Essentially, this theory proposes that there is no passage of time and no becoming of future events. As a result, one can view this theory as a “block” universe in which every event that has happened, is happening as of right now, and is going to happen has been set in stone.
Leibniz’s conception of infinitely many simple substances and denial of mind/body interaction was developed in response to Spinoza’s claim that there is only one substance and his idea of parallelism, which states that thought and extension express the sa...
The subsequent reconstructs George Edward Moore’s argument for Proof of an External World (G. E. Moore, 228-231):
“a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. If, on the other hand, the putative proposition is of such a character that the assumption of its tr...
In Quine’s essay “On what there is” he states that “from a phenomenalistic point of view, the conceptual scheme of physical objects is a convenient myth.” In this essay I will argue that Quine believes, from a certain perspective, that the made up idea of physical entities is a myth. Oftentimes, individuals use this as a way out of contemplating other possible perspectives that may make more sense but are harder to come to terms with. Essentially, based on what Quine is saying, we cannot be sure that material objects actually “exist.” The truth, he believes, is unknown and possibly unknowable. He comes to this conclusion after a comprehensive argument, dealing with multiple oppositions and arriving at what he believes to be the best option for how we should view existence.
Though Leibniz, in his Monadology, does depend on logical principles which appear to be quite obvious, the Law of Contradiction and the Principle of Sufficient Reason, in coalition with other logical axioms, make sure that the philosopher’s metaphysical, ontological and epistemological theories are cohesive, consistent, and thoroughly explained.
For the purposes of this paper, a grasp of the differences between logical, metaphysical, and natural supervenience will be sufficient to understand the arguments put forth by materialists, property dualists, and eliminativists. Logical supervenience can be characterized by the claim: B-properties supervene logically on A-properties if it is logically impossible for two situations to have the same B-properties without also sharing the same A-properties.
Physicalism is either false, or it lacks content. Physicalism claims that everything can be exhaustively described and explained by physics, implying that persons are merely collections of fundamental physical particles and as such, their behavior can thoroughly be described and explained using physics. This, however, begs the question of which physics accounts for the descriptions and explanations of the world, and in turn, persons and their behaviors; the progressive nature of science renders the term ‘physics’ ambiguous. This problem is called the Hempel’s dilemma and is argued thusly:
Moreover, as mentioned before, in my opinion, Strawson’s objection is not convincing enough to reduce the strength of Russell’s Theory of Definite Description.