Opportunity Details

Details about the opportunity you selected and the mentor are shown below. It is your responsibility to contact the mentor to discuss collaborating with them this summer. If your mentor invites you to submit an application, you can access that from the front page of this site. Upon completion of the application, it will be sent to the mentor for approval before being passed on to the Summer Scholar Selection Committee, which will make the decisions.

Faculty Information

David Denby

David.Denby@tufts.edu

Dr.

P: (617) 627-4931

Address:

31 West Ave.

Salem, MA 01970

Affiliated Institutions:

Arts and Sciences

Associated Departments:

philosophy

Web Sites:

http://ase.tufts.edu/philosophy/people/denby.shtml

Opportunity:

Parts, Differences, and Statues

Summary:

This is an investigation into mereology -- the theory of parts and wholes -- its axiomatization, and its application to a traditional philosophical puzzle. A central issue is whether the notion of parthood, as pretheoretically understood, is extensional, i.e. whether wholes can differ without differing in their parts. Most people intially think it is, but that seems to commit us to the literal identity of a statue and the clay of which it is made, an identification many want to resist as it seems to violate Leibniz's Law. The resolution of this problem has a number of implications for our understanding of pretheoretical conceptualization of physical objects generally and for metaphysics and meta-metaphysics.

Contact Via:

E-mail

What is the timeframe for this research opportunity?

two months -- July and August

Prerequisities for students?

At least two philosophy courses, including one at least partly in metaphysics.

Responsibilities for students?

Weekly meetings with short weekly papers. A final research paper (20-40pp)

Area(s) of Research:

Metaphysics