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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Four Dimensionalism' and 'A Plea for Substitutional Quantification'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail

14740	If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider]
	Full Idea: This powerful puzzle (known to the Stoics, introduced by Geach, popularised by Wiggins) has a cat Tibbles and a proper part Tib, which is all of Tibbles except the tail. If Tibbles loses her tail, the two were distinct, but they now coincide.
	From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1)
	A reaction: [compressed] Compare a few people leave a football ground, and what was a large part of the crowd becomes the whole of the crowd. Which suggests that there is no problem if cats are like crowds. But we don't like that view of cats.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay

14752	Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider]
	Full Idea: Presumably it is claimed that the artist 'created' the statue because the object created is essentially a statue, and thus cannot be identified with the unformed lump of clay with which the artist began.
	From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001])
	A reaction: This is based on Burke's views. This is sortal essentialism, rather than my own view of essence as an inner explanatory mechanism or form. If an old abstract sculpture was no longer recognised as a statue, would it necessarily still be a statue?

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects

14743	The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider]
	Full Idea: There are numerous cases in which there is pressure to admit coincident entities. The best way of coming to grips with this, I think, invokes the stage view. ...In the worm theory, coincident objects are no more mysterious than overlapping roads.
	From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1)
	A reaction: At this point I get nervous if in order to 'get to grips' with a phenomenon which is hard to articulate but obvious to common sense, we have to invoke a rather startling metaphysics that completely upends the common sense we started with.