The Seminars of Philosophy of Perception, Mind, and Language
The Seminars of Perception, Mind, and Language (former Seminars of Philosophy of Language and Mind) take place every year since 2001 at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Milan. The meetings aim at being an opportunity for people working in analytic philosophy to debate the latest directions of research.
The meetings are structured as a 45-50 minutes presentation, followed by an extensive discussion time. They are open to anyone interested in the topic, especially undergraduate and Ph.D. students. The language of the talks is either Italian or English.
Alfredo Tomasetta (University of Bergamo)
May 26 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Mereological nihilism and the self
Abstract: Merelogical nihilists say that there only exist simple things, things without proper parts. And if mereological nihilism is true, then, probably I – and you – do not exist. Consider:
(N)
1) If I exist, then there is something, me, which has proper parts;
2) there are no such things (merelogical nihilism is true), so
3) I do not exist.
(Dorr-Rosen 2002; Sider 2013; Van Inwagen 1990). But how (N)’s conclusion could be true? Certainly my thoughts exist, and if they do, so do I: cogito ergo sum. So, granted the plausibility of premise 1), premise 2) – that is mereological nihilism – must be false. Against this cartesian critique to mereological nihilism, Dorr and Rosen (2002) have an answer. ‘Your’ thoughts do exist, but you do not: the activities of thought are carried out jointly by partless things; unless this idea cannot be showed to be incoherent, they say, (N) may well be a sound argument and nihilism is not refuted. Let us grant that from the somewhat vague idea that thougths are collectively performed by a plurality of simples one could not draw any contradiction – at least not in an obvious way. But conceding the prima facie consistency of this proposal is not to say that, as it stands, it is a convincing one. How exactly, metaphysically speaking, do the simples perform collectively the acts of thought? What exactly are, in this perspective, the acts of thought themselves? Rosen and Dorr do not offer clear answers to questions like these and, indeed, they do not even attempt to give one. In order to advance the debate, I consider three different ways to understand the nature of collective acts of thoughts and show them wanting.
References
Dorr-Rosen (2002) “Composition as Fiction”, in Gale (ed.) The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 151-174.
Sider (2013), “Against Parthood”, in Bennett-Zimmerman (eds.) Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, volume 8, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 237-293.
Van Inwagen (1990) Material Beings, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.