On Constitution and All-Fusions

Recently, Judith Jarvis Thomson has offered a definition of the constitution relation against the backdrop of a robust ontology of objects she calls all-fusions. Despite finding her reasons to believe in all manner of all-fusions intriguing, in this paper I note an unsatisfactory consequence of her position for constitution-theorists. I argue that an unrestricted commitmentto all-fusions should lead the constitution-theorist to reject her definitionof the constitution relation, on the grounds that by choosing our all-fusionscarefully, we can secure the unpalatable result that two different all-fusionsconstitute (or are constituted by) the same thing, even though neither one ofthem constitutes the other.     

Temporal Parts and Moral Personhood

Philosophical Studies -