Dear faculties and Grads, please join us for our first department workshop next Thursday in room 227 of the Institute of Foreign Philosophy at Peking University, beginning at 6:30pm. Zeyu Chi, our new postdoc fellow this year, will be presenting her paper on material coincidence. See below for an abstract of the paper. You can also reach Zeyu at zc255@cornell.edu for a full manuscript in case you want to take a look at the paper beforehand.

    The department workshop is a new event that we hope to initiate this Fall. The goal is to offer a regular occasion, where grad students and faculty members can present their work-in-progress in a relatively low pressure setting and get feedback from their peers here at Peking. Presentation from grad students is especially encouraged. The presentation is expected to take around 40 min, followed by a five min break and a 40 min Q&A. All is welcome to sit in for any part of the event. Feel free to contact Zeyu if you are thinking about presenting this semester or have any question about the workshop. Look forward to seeing you all next Thursday!

    Abstract:

    The paper examines a recent argument for coincidence between material entities, which appeals to various non-modal sortalish differences between a statue and its constituting matter. I offer a one-thinger reply to the argument. I suggest that the argument fails due to a mixed usage of names such as David and Piece: the names can either be used to highlight distinct sortal profiles of a material entity or to refer to the entity itself. Further, I defend a metaphysical picture, on which an object can be member of distinct kinds in a world by bearing distinct similarity relations to other objects in the same world.