Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Material Beings', 'Truthmaking for Presentists' and 'Of the standard of taste'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 2. Objects that Change
Change is instantiation of a non-uniform distributional property, like 'being red-then-orange' [Cameron]
     Full Idea: What change is on the account being offered is to instantiate a non-uniform distributional property. Being red at one time and orange at a later time is to be analysed as instantiating the distributional property 'being red-then-orange'.
     From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4)
     A reaction: One of those moments when you begin to doubt whether 'being analysed' successfully actually adds much to our wisdom. His property sounds suspiciously 'gruesome' - i.e. subject to the vagaries of how we chose to describe the thing.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 7. Intermittent Objects
When an electron 'leaps' to another orbit, is the new one the same electron? [Inwagen]
     Full Idea: Is the 'new' electron in the lower orbit the one that was in the higher orbit? Physics, as far as I can tell, has nothing to say about this.
     From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14)
     A reaction: I suspect that physicists would say that philosophers are worrying about such questions because they haven't grasped the new conceptual scheme that emerged in 1926. The poor mutts insist on hanging on to 'objects'.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 9. Ship of Theseus
If you reject transitivity of vague identity, there is no Ship of Theseus problem [Inwagen]
     Full Idea: If you have rejected the Principle of the Transitivity of (vague) Identity, it is hard to see how the problem of the Ship of Theseus could arise.
     From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18)
     A reaction: I think this may well be the best solution to the whole problem