The Instance Theory of Location

Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva)

10 November 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The concept of location—of something being located at, or occupying, a place or a region—has been an important topic of philosophical investigations in the past fifteen years or so. Despite all the attention that has been paid to the concept, we still do not have a satisfactory general theory of location. By “general theory”, I mean a theory that both (i) does justice to the fact that location goes way beyond location at a spatial or temporal or spatiotemporal region and (ii) does not rule out phenomena whose possibility is a matter of substantial philosophical dispute. My aim is to put forward a general theory of location that fares better than those that have been developed so far. The key ideas of the theory are as follows: (i) there are two kinds of occupants, direct occupants and indirect occupants; (ii) every indirect occupant has at least one instance, which is a direct occupant; and (iii) indirect occupants occupy regions by having instances occupying these regions.