Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize

I've been asked to post the following notice about the

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize

THE

Sponsored by the Ammonius Foundation (http://www.ammonius.org/) and administered by the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, the 2012 Younger Scholar Prize annual essay competition is open to scholars who are within ten years of receiving a Ph.D. or students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program. (Independent scholars should enquire of the editor to determine eligibility.) The award is $8,000. Winning essays will appear in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, so submissions must not be under review elsewhere.

Essays should generally be no longer than 10,000 words; longer essays may be considered, but authors must seek prior approval. To be eligible for the 2012 prize, submissions must be electronically submitted by 30 January 2012 (paper submissions are no longer accepted). Refereeing will be blind; authors should omit remarks and references that might disclose their identities. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail. The winner is determined by a committee of members of the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, and will be announced in early March. At the author’s request, the board will simultaneously consider entries in the prize competition as submissions for Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, independently of the prize.

Previous winners of the Younger Scholar Prize are:

Thomas Hofweber, “Inexpressible Properties and Propositions”, Vol. 2;

Matthew McGrath, “Four-Dimensionalism and the Puzzles of Coincidence”, Vol. 3;

Cody Gilmore, “Time Travel, Coinciding Objects, and Persistence”, Vol. 3;

Stephan Leuenberger, “Ceteris Absentibus Physicalism”, Vol. 4;

Jeffrey Sanford Russell, “The Structure of Gunk: Adventures in the Ontology of Space”, Vol. 4;

Bradford Skow, “Extrinsic Temporal Metrics”, Vol. 5;

Jason Turner, “Ontological Nihilism”, Vol. 6;

Rachael Briggs and Graeme A. Forbes, “The Real Truth About the Unreal Future”, Vol. 7;

Shamik Dasgupta, “Absolutism vs Comparativism about Quantities”, forthcoming, Vol. 8.

Enquiries should be addressed to Dean Zimmerman:

dwzimmer@rci.rutgers.edu

Parthood, CAI and grounding

I've posted a new paper: 'Parts generate the whole, but they are not identical to it'. The paper argues that the view that wholes are grounded (at least in part) by their parts is better than the view that wholes are their parts (composition as identity), because it does as well or better at solving certain puzzles concerning parthood, and has the advantage of not having counter-intuitive essentialist consequences. Any comments welcome!