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April 26, 2005
No Difference without a Difference Maker
is the title of Achille C. Varzi's paper which he will deliver to us on Friday, April 29. Prof. Varzi's visit is sponsored by S.U.'s Graduate Student Organization and is made possible by Judy's hard work as the External Speakers Committee (which is not a committee.)
The talk will begin at 4 pm in Killian Room, 500 Hall of Languages. Area philosophers or parts thereof are welcome to attend.
Following is the abstract.
I focus on three mereological principles: the Extensionality of Parthood (EP), the Uniqueness of Composition (UC), and the Extensionality of Composition (EC). These principles are not equivalent. Nonetheless, they are closely related (and often equated) as they all reflect the basic nominalistic dictum, no difference without a difference maker. And each one of them--individually
or collectively--has been challenged on philosophical grounds. In the first part I argue that such challenges do not quite threaten EP insofar as they are either self-defeating or unsupported. In the second part I argue that they hardly undermine the tenability of UC and EC as well.
Posted by ikurtsal at April 26, 2005 11:06 AM
Comments
I was thinking of sending some parts. Is it ok if they're spatial parts, or does it have to be temporal parts?
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce at April 26, 2005 6:40 PM
We'd like it if the part in attendence is a philosopher.
Bring your only temporal part, why don't you?
Posted by: Irem at April 26, 2005 9:26 PM