Abstract
In debates about the metaphysics of material objects examples of colocated objects are commonly taken to be examples of coincidence too. But the argument that colocation is best understood as involving coincidence is never spelled out. This paper shows under what conditions colocation entails coincidence and argues that the entailment depends on a principle that actually rules out certain forms of colocation. This undermines the argument from colocation to coincidence.
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Acknowledgements
Parts of this paper were presented at the ILLC in Amsterdam on 28 June 2019 and, online, at the Philosophy Department in Aarhus on 22 November 2019. I would like to thank the organisers Arianna Betti and Peter Hawke, and Johanna Seibt, respectively, and the audiences at those events for their discussion. Special thanks to Claudio Calosi and David Liggins for comments on previous versions of this paper. Thanks also to various anonymous reviewers and especially the reviewer for this journal for their comments. And, finally, many thanks to the Swedish Research Council for funding my research (international postdoc grant number 2017-06160_3).
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Thanks to Vetenskapsrådet for funding my research (international postdoc grant 2017-06160_3).
Appendix A: Colocation models
Appendix A: Colocation models
There are at least two ways in which an extensional mereologist can allow for colocation: the non-located parts approach and the interpenetration approach. More sophisticated philosophical interpretations of these two approaches are not at issue here. Instead I will present a few Hasse diagrams that illustrate how general extensional mereology can have colocation-friendly models.
A GEM non-located parts model is represented in Fig. 1, where full lines going upwards represent proper parthood relations between objects (its transitive closure is omitted) and dotted arrows represent the relation of exact location. So x and y1 are colocated at s, a region composed of r1 and r2. Note that z3 is a non-located atom, which means that the composites y2 and y3 are also each colocated with one of their atomic parts because their other atomic part is non-located.
A model of GEM that allows for interpenetration is represented in Fig. 2. Note that y3 is colocated with each of its parts, because all its parts are colocated. One can easily check that these figures satisfy all the relevant principles.
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Smid, J. Mind the Gap. J Philos Logic 51, 57–73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-021-09609-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-021-09609-5