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Single Idea 14469

[filed under theme 9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects ]

Full Idea

The Overdetermination Argument: a baseball is irrelevant to whether its atoms shatter a window, the shattering is caused by the atoms in concert, the shattering is not overdetermined, so if the baseball exists it doesn't cause the shattering.

Gist of Idea

Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage

Source

Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], 3)

Book Ref

Merricks,Trenton: 'Objects and Persons' [OUP 2003], p.56

A Reaction

An obvious thought is that no individual atom does any sort of breaking at all - it is only when they act as a team, and an appropriate name for the team is a 'baseball', and the team is real.

Related Idea

Idea 14472 If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson]

The 28 ideas from 'Objects and Persons'

14229 Merricks agrees that there are no composite objects, but offers a different semantics [Merricks, by Liggins]
6123 Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks]
6124 I say that most of the objects of folk ontology do not exist [Merricks]
6130 'Composition' says things are their parts; 'constitution' says a whole substance is an object [Merricks]
6125 We can eliminate objects without a commitment to simples [Merricks]
6127 'Unrestricted composition' says any two things can make up a third thing [Merricks]
6128 Objects decompose (it seems) into non-overlapping parts that fill its whole region [Merricks]
6133 If my counterpart is happy, that is irrelevant to whether I 'could' have been happy [Merricks]
6131 Composition as identity is false, as identity is never between a single thing and many things [Merricks]
6132 Composition as identity is false, as it implies that things never change their parts [Merricks]
6134 Is swimming pool water an object, composed of its mass or parts? [Merricks]
6135 A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks]
6136 Eliminativism about objects gives the best understanding of the Sorites paradox [Merricks]
6138 It seems wrong that constitution entails that two objects are wholly co-located [Merricks]
6137 Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks]
6140 Maybe the word 'I' can only refer to persons [Merricks]
6141 There is no visible difference between statues, and atoms arranged statuewise [Merricks]
6143 Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks]
6142 The 'folk' way of carving up the world is not intrinsically better than quite arbitrary ways [Merricks]
6144 You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks]
6145 Intrinsic properties are those an object still has even if only that object exists [Merricks]
6147 The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks]
6146 Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks]
6148 Human organisms can exercise downward causation [Merricks]
6149 Free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism destroys human choice [Merricks]
6150 The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks]
14472 If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson]
14469 Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage [Merricks]