Reply to Parsons, Reply to Heller, and Reply to Rea

Abstract

I think the topic of location is currently the most intriguing issue in metaphysics. And although I here tend to be more liberal about conceptual possibility and less liberal about metaphysical possibility than Parsons, I think he has done truly excellent and ground-breaking work in this area among the very best to date. But that's partly because I can understand him. As he admits, however, he can't fully understand me. But this is not my misfortune alone, for I believe an increasing number of those of us writing on the metaphysics of location have been speaking with the same accent (Balashov 2007, Gilmore 2007 and 2006, and McDaniel 2007). So let me try to say a few things in a gesture towards intelligibility. First some background to get you in the right mood. A subs tan tivalist who does not identify material objects with regions recognizes at least one relation between them apart from distinctness namely, occupation or location. Moreover, many substantivalists take location to be a fundamental relation. Facts about location form part of the fundamental supervenience base of the world. Imagine, if you will, four such substantivalists who are wondering what the location relation is like and who are debating the proper answers to these two questions: