Counterparts and Compositional Nihilism: A Reply to A. J. Cotnoir

One of the primary burdens of the mereological nihilist is accounting for our ordinary intuitions about material objects. It certainly seems as if I am typing on a keyboard, which has particular keys and buttons as parts. But such intuitions are mistaken if mereological nihilism is right, leading to widespread error. So nihilists often propose paraphrases of our everyday utterances as compensation. Cotnoir aims to deliver a new paraphrase strategy on behalf of the nihilist: one that interprets parthood and composition modally, and interprets (spatial) parts as (modal) counterparts. On Cotnoir’s proposal, the nihilist must accept that there can be heterogeneous extended simples. Moreover, she must accept some way of avoiding violations of the Indiscernibility of Identitcals. Cotnoir mentions five acceptable ways of doing this, but prefers the Ehring and McDaniel approach, which appeals to unextended, instantaneous localized tropes. One advantage of his proposal, Cotnoir explains, is that it is compatible with classical mereology, without additional ontological costs. It can also handle gunk and emergent properties, which is traditionally a problem for nihilist paraphrase views. Finally, Cotnoir claims that his view can honor our everyday claims about ordinary objects, such as: I am typing on a keyboard, which has key and buttons as parts.