Reducing location.

Supersubstantivalists identify material objects with regions of spacetime. Accordingly, they take their view to be both more ideologically parsimonious than other substantivalists (dualists) because they can reduce location to identity with a region and they can explain why the mereological structur...

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Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 206; no. 4; pp. 1 - 22
Autor principal: Davis, Cruz Austin
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Oct2025
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        au: Davis, Cruz Austin
        affil: https://ror.org/0072zz521 Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
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      keyword:
        Location
        Mereological harmony
        Metaphysics of material objects
        Metaphysics of spacetime
        Reduction
        Simplicity
        Supersubstantivalism
      ab: Supersubstantivalists identify material objects with regions of spacetime. Accordingly, they take their view to be both more ideologically parsimonious than other substantivalists (dualists) because they can reduce location to identity with a region and they can explain why the mereological structure of objects mirrors the mereological structure of their locations (henceforth, “harmony”). However, I argue that these motivations for supersubstantivalism don’t hold water. Specifically, I argue that supersubstantivalists can only claim the aforementioned advantages just so long as they stand in a unique position to reduce location. But this depends on the illicit assumption that no possible spacetime structures have co-located regions – something falsified by the possibility of merely pseudo-metric spaces. Further, any alternative reduction is equally available to the dualist. Accordingly, this allows dualists to have the same explanation of harmony as the supersubstantivalist. As such, these considerations level the dialectical playing field between dualists and supersubstantivalists.
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    language: English
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