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Applications and Extensions of Counterpart Theory University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2017 Applications and Extensions of Counterpart Theory Bridgette Peterson University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Metaphysics Commons Recommended Citation Peterson, Bridgette, "Applications and Extensions of Counterpart Theory" (2017). Doctoral Dissertations. 1117. https://doi.org/10.7275/10671975.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1117 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. APPLICATIONS AND EXTENSIONS OF COUNTERPART THEORY A Dissertation Presented by BRIDGETTE BAILIE PETERSON Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2017 Philosophy © Copyright by Bridgette Bailie Peterson 2017 All Rights Reserved APPLICATIONS AND EXTENSIONS OF COUNTERPART THEORY A Dissertation Presented By BRIDGETTE BAILIE PETERSON Approved as to style and content by: Maya Eddon, Chair Phillip Bricker, Member Michael Tooley, Member Angelika Kratzer, Member Joseph Levine, Department Head Philosophy DEDICATION To John Friedrich ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A couple of decades ago, I would have thought it absurd if someone told me that I would be finishing my PhD in philosophy. I did not really know what philosophy was, and I was far from going back to school to get a high school diploma, let alone an advanced degree. This journey has been long and tumultuous, and the only way that any success has been possible is through the support and assistance of a great number of kind and capable people. It would take many pages to thank everyone and these brief remarks are insufficient. I would like to thank my committee for their incredible patience, advice, and commitment to my success. Thank you to Angelika Kratzer, Michael Tooley and Phillip Bricker for time and assistance over the course of this process. Thank you in particular to Maya Eddon. In all the closest possible worlds in which I attempt to continue without Maya’s mentoring and assistance, from the first year forward, I fail. Thank you for making me care about properties and modality, and for letting me know that it’s okay to be hopelessly confused by metaphysical puzzles sometimes. With respect to my dissertation, it has become abundantly clear that such a large open-ended project is against my very nature, and your patience with me in this process has been essential. It is hard to understate how valuable your style of teaching and your generosity as a mentor has been for me in particular and undoubtedly to many other students. I owe a debt of gratitude to my professors at UMass: Fred Feldman, Chris Meacham, Hilary Kornblith, Pete Graham, Joe Levine, Gary Hardegree, Lynne Rudder v Baker and Eileen O’Neill. Lynne and Eileen, the kindness and encouragement you shared with me in my first years as a grad student were more important than you know. My thanks to Fred Feldman, who encouraged me at crucial steps along the way. I will not ever be as entertaining or knowledgeable as Fred, but I try my best to model my teaching of beginning students after his. Thanks to Kim Soland, Trish Magalotti, Jon Rosen, Heidi Furey, Aaron Washington and Bob Gruber for kindness and commiseration over the years. Thanks to Michael Tooley, Graeme Forbes, Chris Heathwood, Wes Morriston and Carol Cleland for inspiration, encouragement and guidance during my undergraduate studies. Carol for introducing me to metaphysics, mentoring me, and making me speak up in class; Wes for being a teaching role model and a patient and supportive philosopher; Michael for ongoing support and advice over the years, and for taking me seriously no matter how misguided or confused my nascent arguments were. I know how much of an impact you have had on my confidence and success and I am grateful and inspired by what you have given back to your students. Kent Wagner for all of those hours of free therapy while navigating the road to graduate school, and the CU McNair Program for letting in a philosopher even though it is pretty hard to formulate a concise research agenda in comparison to other fields. Thank you to Michael Ort, Tom Griffin, Evan Oakley and Michael Snyder for guidance and support as I took the first few steps back to academia. It is clear that your impact on my career trajectory (and the fulfillment I have found within it) has been the most significant since my initial interest in teaching developed in childhood. Thank you to Michael Snyder for that amazing first philosophy class which opened my eyes to the vi formal study of questions that had bothered me for ages, and, importantly, for seeing more in me than I saw in myself when I enrolled at Aims, and encouraging me to continue. Tom Griffin, Michael Ort (especially for asking “how do you know you know,”); and Evan Oakley, who has been a kind mentor and the sort of teacher I aspire to be. I owe additional thanks for your recent words of encouragement—how generous it was for you to share such impactful and beautiful words with a student from the ancient past. It made all the difference in a crucial time. Tricia Everett, for all you have taught me in the past half-decade—it means more to me than I can express and I am not sure that I can thank you sufficiently. You are genuine, intelligent, kind-hearted and unimaginably skilled. I wish it was possible to share your wisdom with everyone who could benefit no matter how lost they are. You have been a friend and a source of encouragement for the entirety of my grad career and I am so grateful for you. My aunts and uncles for always believing in me (and thinking that the humanities are worthwhile pursuits), and Papa. Nonna, who will always be a tremendous source of love and encouragement in my life. Grammy, I am so glad to have you as a role model. Thank you for your encouragement and support. Thank you to Flocke Uhlig and Firstene Peterson for love and magic. My family—I am so grateful to have exactly the parents and siblings that I have, and I love you all so much. I could not have done it without each of you. Thank you April, who I still look up to; and Caitlin in particular, for your letters and pictures and notes of encouragement over so many years—they truly made a difference for me, S4E. To my parents—so much of who I am comes directly from who you are and I am so glad vii that you are the type of people that you are. Thank you for being cheerleaders when I was down or felt like I didn’t fit. Dad, thank you for stubbornly believing that I would succeed from Aims onward, despite my pleading for years that it was impossible, and for your support and encouragement throughout this process (SBF). Mom, I could not have done this without you. Not only in these last challenging months, but over the years from Aims onward—the endless phone calls, the times you listened to me explain things that you probably wouldn’t have cared about if I didn’t, and for being there for me no matter what. I am so lucky to have a best friend, mentor and therapist in you who gets me so well and knows how to fix things no matter what. Last, but in no way last in significance, I thank my Schatz. For knowing me better than I did and refusing to listen to me in Regensburg. For editing so many drafts of so many things when you had other obligations, for feeding me and helping me get sleep even at the expense of your own. For not giving up on me even when it seemed unlikely that things would end well. For sticking with this anxious procrastinator through illnesses, challenges, undergrad, grad school, application processes, moving across oceans and then across states, a dissertation and now parenthood! I will not try to imagine where I would be without you, because it is nowhere near where I want to be. Thank you for showing me that the things we cannot do on our own we can sometimes do together. Thank you to all who made this possible. This is your victory and your accomplishment nearly as much as it is mine. I appreciate you more than I express and I love you so much. Dedicated to John Friedrich for providing such motivation and for expanding my understanding of what is possible and how much one can love. viii ABSTRACT APPLICATIONS AND EXTENSIONS OF COUNTERPART THEORY SEPTEMBER 2017 BRIDGETTE BAILIE PETERSON B.A., UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Maya Eddon An exploration of the details of counterpart theory, and some applications of the view. In Chapter 1, I set out the view and clarify the most important features: that the counterpart relation is a context dependent similarity relation, and that individuals are world-bound entities. I then set out what I take to be the most promising methods of filling in important details. Chapter 2 is a discussion of an alternative view, lump theory. I attempt to distinguish lump theory from counterpart theory, and argue that several attempt to do so fail.
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