Yuri Balashov (University of Georgia in Athens – yuribalashov.com) will give a talk at the University of Geneva on Thursday 17th of December 2015 on
“Relativistic Supercoincidence?”
Time and venue
Thursday 17th of December 2015, 18:15-20:00. Room B109, Uni Bastions, Geneva (map).
The talk will be followed by a dinner, all are welcome.
Abstract
Worries about coincident material objects – Tibbles and Tib, Lump and Vase, Lumpl, and other familiar cases – have been used to adjudicate many proposals in the metaphysics of composition and persistence, ranging from natural (constitutionalism) to radical (nihilism). The traditional coincidence puzzles get their bite from non-categorical properties, such as had a tail and did not have a tail. But why should we worry about such apparently “free-floating” pairs of allegedly incompatible properties to the extent we should about being square vs. being round, or hot vs. cold? The decidedly bleak appearance of the former makes them excellent candidates for the vicarious therapy generously offered by the counterpart analyses of modal and temporal predication, and by various relativizing strategies.
I present a new case of material coincidence that is non-vicarious, robust, categorical, non-modal, non-relational, and striking. It is motivated by physical considerations and is not susceptible to any of the standard solutions.
The Metaphysics of Time and its Occupants 