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COMPOSITION AND COINCIDENCE
Author(s) -
Olson Eric T.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0114.1996.tb00177.x
Subject(s) - statue , coincidence , philosophy , persistence (discontinuity) , odds , epistemology , composition (language) , art , literature , art history , mathematics , statistics , medicine , logistic regression , alternative medicine , geotechnical engineering , pathology , engineering
Many philosophers say that the same atoms may compose at once a statue and a lump of matter that could outlive the statue. I reject this because no difference between the statue and the lump could explain why they have different persistence conditions. But if we say that the lump is the statue, it is difficult to see how there could be any human beings. I argue that this and analogous problems about material objects admit only of solutions that at least appear to be radically at odds with our ordinary thinking.