The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will meet on November 18th from 4:15-6:15 in-person at the Graduate Center (Room 4419) for a talk by Claudio Calosi (Venice) and Damiano Costa (Lugano).

Title: Pluralisms in gunky worlds

Abstract: The possibility of gunk, namely the possibility that an entity possesses an infinitely descending chain of smaller and smaller parts, has famously been used by Schaffer (2010) to argue in favour of priority monism, namely the view that the whole universe is the fundamental concrete entity on which any of its parts depends. In this paper, we present and explore different principled ways of being a priority pluralist in gunky worlds, thus deflecting the gunk argument. Some of these ways turn out to be examples of middleism, i.e. the view that the fundamental level is that of middle-sized and mereologically intermediate objects. Hence, they don’t only effectively deflect the gunk threat to pluralism, but they also catalyse any argument in favour of the middleist position.