Handout18.pdf - pdf2html Annotated
Mereological essentialism: no object can lose or gain parts. In other words,
ME For any t, t
, if x is part of y at t, and y exists at t
, then x is part of y at t
4. Van Inwagen's answer to the Special Composition Question
The xs compose something iff the activity of the xs constitutes a life, or
there is only one of the xs.
What is a life? A certain kind of self-maintaining event, that is `reasonably well-
individuated' and `jealous' (it never happens that the activity of some things
constitutes two different lives).
A consequence of this view: there are no tables or computers or statues or lumps
of clay or ships or grains of sand.... For surely if there was such a things as a
table, etc., it would have to be composed by some things whose activity did not
constitute a life (and which were more than one in number).
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