Destruction, alteration, simples and world stuff

Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):24–38 (2003)
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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 really has 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

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Citations of this work

Biological Species Are Natural Kinds.Crawford L. Elder - 2008 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (3):339-362.
The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions.Mark Steen - 2012 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Events and Their Names.Jonathan Bennett - 1988 - Oxford University Press UK.
There are no ordinary things.Peter Unger - 1979 - Synthese 41 (2):117 - 154.
Towards ontological nihilism.John O'Leary-Hawthorne & Andrew Cortens - 1995 - Philosophical Studies 79 (2):143 - 165.
On that which is not.Samuel C. Wheeler - 1979 - Synthese 41 (2):155 - 173.

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