Coinciding objects: in defence of the 'standard account'

Abstract

1. In a number of recent articles ([2], [3] and especially [4]), Michael B. Burke has argued against what he calls the 'standard account' of relations between objects falling under different sortals, according to which numerically distinct objects can exist in the same place at the same time for instance, a certain statue and the piece of copper which composes it. According to the standard account, when a piece of copper is fashioned into a statue, a new object is created the statue which cannot be identified with the piece of copper composing it, because that piece of copper pre-existed the statue. Burke maintains that this verdict rests upon the false assumption that the piece of copper composing the statue can be identified with the piece of copper which pre-existed the statue (see [4], pp. 595-6). If we drop this assumption, we can say that the statue and the piece of copper composing it are numerically identical, having come into existence at the same time. Being identical, each is both a statue and a piece of copper. Burke is fully aware that his claim that one and the same object can be both a statue and a piece of copper conflicts with another assumption of the standard account, namely, that the sortal terms 'statue' and 'piece of copper' have associated with them different sets of persistence conditions (or criteria of identity), and that every object to which a given sortal term applies must comply with the persistence conditions associated with that term. Burke does not challenge the first part of this assumption that the sortal terms in question have associated with them different persistence conditions but only the second: that an object must comply with the persistence conditions associated with every sortal term which applies to it (see [4], p. 600). He believes that two sortal terms, with which different persistence conditions are associated, may both apply to the same object, and that when this happens there is a principled way of deciding which set of persistence conditions the object should be thought to comply with (see [4], pp. 610 ff.). Thus, in the case of the piece of copper composing the statue, Burke holds that this object complies with the persistence conditions associated with the sortal term 'statue', whereas he holds that the piece of copper which pre-existed the statue complies instead with the persistence conditions associated with the sortal term 'piece of copper' ([4], p. 605). As he puts it, the latter piece of copper is merely a piece of copper, whereas the former is also a statue ([4], p. 597).