Destruction, Alteration, Simples and World Stuff

Author: Elder, Crawford L.

Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 53, Number 210, January 2003 , pp. 24-38(15)

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Abstract:

When a tree is chopped to bits, or a sweater unravelled, its matter still exists. Since antiquity, it has sometimes been inferred that nothing has really been destroyed: what has happened is just that this matter has assumed new form. Contemporary versions hold that apparent destruction of a familiar object is just rearrangement of microparticles or of `physical simples' or `world-stuff'. But if destruction of a familiar object is genuinely to be reduced to mere alteration of something else, we must identify an alteration proper to the career, the course of existence, of this something else; relatedly, the alteration must be characterizable without asserting the existence of the familiar object. All contemporary views fail one of these requirements.

Document Type: Original article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00293

Affiliations: 1: University of Connecticut

Publication date: 2003-01-01