Shieva Kleinschmidt [This version differs from the Phil Studies ... - Usc

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will follow Markosian in using ‘a portion of stuff’ as synonymous with ‘some stuff’. So even though ‘portion’ is a count noun, it does not refer to things. 7 None of this is to give an account of what stuff is, however. Markosian suggests we take the notion of stuff (as well as thing and constitution) as primitive. What’s crucial for the stuff theorist is that stuff occupies an ontological category separate from (and not reducible to) those of things and pluralities. A portion of stuff is never identical to a thing or plurality, even though it can be referred to, is self-identical, and can be differentiated from other entities. 8 It’s difficult to further cash out this talk of fundamental ontological difference, but the stuff theorist depends on it when they claim that colocation of members of the same fundamental ontological category is problematic, but colocation of members of different fundamental ontological categories (at the level of thing, stuff, and plurality) is not. There is disagreement about when it is problematic for two entities to exactly occupy the same region. Some people believe it is never problematic. Others say that it is always problematic, regardless of which ontological categories the entities involved belong to. 9 The stuff response presupposes that each of these views is incorrect. For if the first response were correct, then there would be no need to posit stuff to respond to our original puzzle; and if the second view were correct, the positing of stuff wouldn’t 7 I’m also going to remain neutral as possible on the persistence conditions of portions. When asserting that the bronze is actually a portion of stuff, however, it’s important to consider that in order for this to be plausible the portion of stuff must have the same persistence conditions that we took the bronze to have. Thus, if the bronze does not have mereological constancy as a persistence condition but we think that any portion of stuff would have such a persistence condition, then we cannot use stuff to avoid colocation in this case. Another persistence condition which may vary from stuff to thing is the requirement of spatial proximity of an entity’s parts. The proponent of the stuff-solution must be aware of these issues. Further, even if the stuff theorist’s characterisations of bronze correspond to the characterisations we took it to have, there will still be worries about colocation involving the statue: for instance, what of the statue and the lump of bronze (which may have close spatial proximity of its parts as one of its persistence conditions)? However, the question addressed in this paper is not whether positing stuff can adequately address all instances of the problem of colocation in the vicinity (!), but rather whether it can solve even one, and how we would need to characterise stuff in order to achieve this. These other instances of the problem of colocation do raise an important concern, however: they must be addressed somehow, and if the way in which it’s done can also address the statue and bronze case (or whatever case we’re trying to address by positing stuff), it seems that avoiding colocation no longer gives us motivation to claim stuff exists. 8 Zimmerman, “Coincident Objects: Could a ‘Stuff Ontology’ Help?” p. 22. Zimmerman evaluates this predication over stuff, and if he’s right in thinking that it must be incorrect then the view I’m evaluating cannot get off the ground. But because I’m interested in drawing out other consequences of the view, I’ll set this issue aside. 9 This view has some strange consequences. For instance, it has the result that either events are not located, or they are problematically coincident with things that exactly occupy the same regions, given that those things are not themselves events.
help: the colocation of the statue and the bronze would remain problematic even if the bronze were a portion of stuff rather than a thing. The stuff view, in fact, seems to presuppose a third view of when co-location is problematic, namely the view that two entities exactly occupying the same region is problematic whenever the entities are of the same fundamental ontological category (thing, stuff, plurality, etc.), but not when they are of differing ontological categories. Proponents of this view take problematic colocation to occur when and only when two material entities of the same fundamental ontological category exactly occupy the same region. 10 The idea is that this is the kind of colocation common-sense takes issue with. Two things, like a tabletop and a mirror, won’t share the same region. But a thing and the matter it’s made of not only will share a region, they must. The special relation that stands between them, the relation of constitution, allows (and even requires) that its relata are in exactly the same region. 11 There is a final possible view about when colocation is problematic: it is problematic when and only when both entities in the region are things. This claim, if defended, would be a successful response to the problems I raise in §3, where I claim that the proponent of a stuff solution must avoid colocation of portions of stuff. However, this view is unsatisfying: why would be problematic for two material things to exactly 10 Some, like David Wiggins, even define colocation to reflect this. That is, x and y are colocated iff (i) x and y are both material, (ii) x is not identical to y, (iii) x and y are of the same ontological category, and (iv) there is a region, r, such that any subregion of r is occupied by both x and y, and there is no region not within r which is occupied by either x or y. (Based on the account presented by David Wiggins in “On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time,” p. 5 in Rea 1997. By his account, colocation (which he calls ‘coincidence’) occurs when “two things of the same kind (that is, . . . which satisfy the same sortal or substance concept) . . . occupy exactly the same volume at exactly the same time.”) There are other definitions of colocation as well, however, such as a sharing of all spatial and temporal parts (Simons, Parts: A Study in Ontology, p. 210). The difference between these two definitions seems to be that the first allows two entities to exactly occupy the same region without being colocated if they are of different ontological kinds, whereas the second does not (another difference between the accounts arises when one denies DAUP). Also, what the relevant ontological kinds are differs across sources – that stuff and thing are (at least some of the) relevant kinds needs to be defended by the proponent of this solution. 11 Obviously, further defence of this view of colocation is needed. For instance, the appeal to constitution is problematic. In much of the literature, ‘constitution’ is not used in the sense in which I will be using it in this paper. Thus there is a potential response with which someone can say that constitution, on their account, requires distinct entities of the same ontological category to be exactly located in the same region. Insofar as their account begs the question, perhaps the same can be said for the stuff theorist’s appeal to constitution as allowing things and stuff to unproblematically exactly occupy the same regions. Also, I do not intend to give the impression that I have given an exhaustive list of views about when colocation is problematic. One I didn’t include, for instance, is the view that events can be colocated, but entities that are “more paradigmatically material” cannot.
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Page 13: Works Cited Burge, Tyler. 1972. “

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