The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by David Pitt (Cal State LA and CEU) on `Objects and Their Phases` Tuesday, 4 November 2014, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412 ABSTRACT I propose to solve the puzzle of the relation of a clay statue to the lump of clay it’s made of in the following way. A clay statue is a phase of the clay it’s made of (the clay is its “material content”), in the same way that (liquid) water, ice and steam are phases of H2O. A statue is shaped clay; water is liquid H2O; ice is frozen H2O; steam is gaseous H2O. Likewise fists and hands (fists are clenched hands), paper airplanes and paper (paper airplanes are folded paper), ermines and stoats (ermines are white stoats), meteoroids, meteors, meteorites and rocks (orbiting, falling and fallen space rocks, respectively) – and, of course, lumps and the particles that constitute them. Thus, a statue and its constituent lump, though they are not identical, are not distinct physical objects occupying the same place at the same time. They are a lump and a phase of that lump occupying (necessarily – that statue is a phase of that lump) the same place at the same time. ‘Statue’ is a phase sortal that picks out a-material-content-with-a-certain-shape. (The name of a statue is a phase nominal that picks out the same thing.) It is something over and above the lump, but it is not some thing over and above the lump. I apply this way of looking at the relation between kinds of objects and their material contents to the univeralist-nihilist debate over material composition and to temporal and modal questions of material constitution. Krisztina Biber Department of Philosophy Coordinator ------------------------------------------ Central European University Nador u. 9. | 1051 Budapest, Hungary Office: + 36.1.327.3806 | biberk(a)ceu.hu | www.ceu.hu