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SUMMARY:Location\, multi-location and endurance - Carlo Rossi (Faculty of 
 Philosophy)
DTSTART:20131128T130000Z
DTEND:20131128T140000Z
UID:TALK49134@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Toby Bryant
DESCRIPTION:Endurance theorists have often appealed to the notions of exac
 t location or occupation and multi-location in order to explain how object
 s persist through spacetime in the context of the Special Theory of Relati
 vity (STR). Specifically\, endurantists invoke these two notions in order 
 to claim that objects persist through spacetime by exactly occupying multi
 ple spacetime regions\, each of which is temporally unextended and disjoin
 t from the other. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understandi
 ng of these two notions and of the implications they have for understandin
 g our preferred account of endurance. Bearing such aim in mind\, in the fi
 rst section of the paper I discuss the five conditions proposed by Cody Gi
 lmore that any account of exact occupation must satisfy\, and also the dif
 ficulties that arise for this cluster of conditions (2006). In the next se
 ction I evaluate an Parsons' alternative proposal\, which defines exact oc
 cupation in terms of overlap (2007). In spite of some advantages over Gilm
 ore's account\, one noticeable shortcoming of this account is that it does
  not allow enduring objects to be multi-located at different spacetime reg
 ions. Enduring objects exactly occupy one spacetime region\, which coincid
 es with their spatiotemporal path. Next\, I explore the possibility of a m
 iddle ground between Gilmore's and Parsons' account\, which might allow us
  to retain the advantages of Parsons' accounts along with multi-location. 
 Such theory seems to be defended by Crisp and Smith (2005)\, but I argue t
 hat they fail in their attempt of treating overlap as primitive and at the
  same time allowing multi-location. If time allows\, I will finally discus
 s the prospects for some alternative ways of characterizing the endurance 
 vs. perdurance debate which are available for those who remain skeptics of
  the intelligibility of the notion of multi-location. Crucially\, these wa
 ys of characterizing the current debate would switch its focus of the disp
 ute from issues about location to issues about parthood (Donnelly 2010\, 2
 011).
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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