‘Wholly Present’ Defined.Thomas M. Crisp &Donald P. Smith -2005 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2):318–344.detailsThree-dimensionalists , sometimes referred to as endurantists, think that objects persist through time by being “wholly present” at every time they exist. But what is it for something to be wholly present at a time? It is surprisingly difficult to say. The threedimensionalist is free, of course, to take ‘is wholly present at’ as one of her theory’s primitives, but this is problematic for at least one reason: some philosophers claim not to understand her primitive. Clearly the three-dimensionalist would be (...) better off if she could state her theory in terms accessible to all. We think she can. What is needed is a definition of ‘is wholly present at’ that all can understand. in this paper, we offer one. (shrink)
Vague Singulars, Semantic Indecision, and the Metaphysics of Persons.Donald P. Smith -2007 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (3):569-585.detailsComposite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.
Kant on the dependency of the cosmological argument on the ontological argument.Donald P. Smith -2003 -European Journal of Philosophy 11 (2):206–218.detailsImmanuel Kant’s well known and thoroughly discussed criticism of the cosmological argument, hereafter ‘CA’, is that it presupposes or depends upon the cogency of the ontological argument, hereafter ‘OA’. Call this criticism ‘the Dependency Thesis’. It is fair to say that the received view on the matter is that Kant failed to establish the Dependency Thesis.1 In what follows, I argue that the received view is mistaken. I begin by rehearsing the standard objection to what is typically taken to be (...) Kant’s primary argument for the Dependency Thesis. I defend Kant by presenting a different argument for his thesis. This argument is not vulnerable to the standard objection, and there is good reason to think that Kant had such an argument in mind. (shrink)