Parts and Places

Parts and Places
Author: Roberto Casati
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1999
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780262032667

Thinking about space is thinking about spatial things. The table is on the carpet; hence the carpet is under the table. The vase is in the box; hence the box is not in the vase. But what does it mean for an object to be somewhere? How are objects tied to the space they occupy? In this book Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi address some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of spatial representation. Their starting point is an analysis of the interplay betwen mereology (the study of part/whole relations), topology (the study of spatial continuity and comapctness) and the theory of spatial location proper. This leads to a unified framework for spatial representation understood quite broadly as a theory of the representation of spatial entities. The framework is then tested against some classical metaphysical questions such as: Are parts essential to their whole? Is spatial co-location a sufficient criterion of identity? What (if anything) distinguishes material objects from events and other spatial entities? The concluding chapters deal with applications to topics as diverse as the logical analysis of movement and the semantics of maps.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death
Author: Ben Bradley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2015
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190271450

This Handbook consists of 21 new essays on the nature and value of death, the relevance of the metaphysics of time and personal identity for questions about death, the desirability of immortality, and the wrongness of killing.

Time, Language, and Ontology

Time, Language, and Ontology
Author: M. Joshua Mozersky
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2015-01-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191028002

This book brings together, in a novel way, an account of the structure of time with an account of our language and thought about time. Joshua Mozersky argues that it is possible to reconcile the human experience of time, which is centred on the present, with the objective conception of time, according to which all moments are intrinsically alike. He defends a temporally centreless ontology along with a tenseless semantics that is compatible with - and indeed helps to explain the need for - tensed language and thought. This theory of time also, it is argued, helps to elucidate the nature of change and temporal passage, neither of which need be denied nor relegated to the realm of subjective experience only. The book addresses a variety of topics including whether the past and future are real; whether temporal passage is a genuine phenomenon or merely a subjective illusion; how the asymmetry of time is to be understood; the nature of representation; how something can change its properties yet retain its identity; and whether objects are three-dimensional or four-dimensional. It is a wide-ranging examination of recent issues in metaphysics, philosophy of language and the philosophy of science and presents a compelling picture of the relationship of human beings to the spatiotemporal world.