Raul Saucedo

This chapter argues that from a particularly weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location, it follows that it is possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of space-time fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. The chapter suggests, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of no less unappealing alternatives. It also discusses a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various important debates in metaphysics.

In this book I articulate a new view about fundamental reality, an alternative to the familiar opposition between monism and pluralism. On this view, what’s metaphysically fundamental is neither the universal whole nor certain subcosmic entities, but the plurality of all entities, i.e. all entities taken collectively. I call it collective allism. Using higher-order resources, I systematically develop the view and give shape to the robust realism about plurals and the unorthodox ideology of fundamentality upon which it rests. I argue that collective allism is tenable and merits serious consideration in current debates about fundamental reality—it’s a worthy rival to monism and pluralism given considerations about quantum entanglement, mereological infinitism, natural laws, and relations.

I articulate a new version of the view that reality consists of temporally extended simples, which is immune to the argument from vagueness for temporal parts and is perfectly compatible with diachronic universalism. Following Josh Parsons’s classification of views about persistence, I take this to be a four-dimensionalist form of endurantism (4DE, for short). What’s distinctive about my version of 4DE is that it incorporates an independently plausible harmony principle about temporal location. I formulate the relevant harmony principle and show that it affords 4DEists a novel, principled way of resisting the argument from vagueness, and ensures that their view is in fact perfectly compatible with unrestricted diachronic composition.

I argue that indeterminacy in matters of part and whole does not require indeterminacy in matters of identity, existence, or cardinality. I argue that if we distinguish between matters of mereology and matters of spatiotemporal location it is possible for parthood and composition to be indeterminate without identity, existence, or cardinality being indeterminate. This affords a new, general line of defense for friends of mereological indeterminacy against influential objections in the literature and suggests a novel approach to the problem of the many.

I show that the combination of unrestricted composition and composition as identity is formally analogous to Frege’s second-order theory of objects and properties, including a commitment to an exact analogue of Basic Law V. I argue that although the view manages to avert a corresponding version of Russell’s paradox, it nonetheless remains in conflict with the Cantorian insight about cardinality underlying the paradox. I argue that such a conflict can be dissipated by thinking about the view in terms of fundamentality.

Four-dimensionalists claim that their take on the temporal versions of the puzzles of coincidence favors their view over three-dimensionalism. In this paper I argue otherwise. In particular, I argue that the four-dimensionalist’s treatment of such puzzles doesn’t give her an edge over so-called `standard theorists’, i.e. three-dimensionalists according to whom there are distinct material objects that coincide at some time. I look at two ways in which the dispute between four-dimensionalists and standard theorists might be construed. First, as an issue about commitment to distinct coincident material objects: the purported advantage of the four-dimensionalist’s approach is supposed to lie in its being compatible with there being no such things. Second, as an issue about explanation of such objects: the alleged superiority of the four-dimensionalist’s view is supposed to lie in its being able to provide a better account of how distinct material things manage to share their parts and exact location at some time. I argue that four-dimensionalism falls short of expectations in either case: the existence of distinct overlapping worms requires the existence of distinct coincident material objects, and temporal parts do not afford any better an explanation of such things than is available to the standard theorist.

I argue that from a very weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location it follows that it's possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of spacetime fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. I defend, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of equally radical alternatives. I also discuss a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various debates in metaphysics.

I give shape to a neglected debate in metaphysics, the debate over the ontological priority between individuality and collectivity. I distinguish the debate from more familiar ones in the recent literature and articulate what I call ontological collectivism, the view that collectivity is prior to individuality. I defend the in-principle intelligibility of the view from forceful general objections and argue that not only is it coherent but also of significant interest to the literature: it allows for overlooked alternatives on a variety of central discussions.

This chapter argues that from a particularly weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location, it follows that it is possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of space-time fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. The chapter suggests, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of no less unappealing alternatives. It also discusses a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various important debates in metaphysics.