What is it to be located?
The literature suggests two main answers to the question of what it is for a material object to be located at a region of spacetime. Both have a number of virtues. However, both suffer from well-known problems. According to one answer, location is a primitive relation with no informative metaphysica...
| Publicado en: | Philosophical Studies Vol. 178; no. 9; pp. 2991 - 3010 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Sep2021
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | The literature suggests two main answers to the question of what it is for a material object to be located at a region of spacetime. Both have a number of virtues. However, both suffer from well-known problems. According to one answer, location is a primitive relation with no informative metaphysical analysis. But this makes a number of necessary truths seem mysterious and leaves them unexplained. According to the other answer, to be located at a region is just to be identical to that region. But this is inconsistent with a number of independently plausible theses about material objects and their locations. In this paper, I explore a new theory of location and argue that it has the virtues of these familiar theories but not their vices. I then explore some further connections the new theory has with some contemporary issues in metaphysics. |
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