The Simplicity of Material Objects

In my dissertation, I advance and develop an unorthodox account of ordinary material objects: Aristotelian Parts Nihilism. According to my theory, ordinary material objects, strictly speaking, do not have proper parts: they are extended simples sharing the exact location of their constituting portions of matter. The present construction has two main theoretical benefits. On the one hand, it preserves the modal intuition according to which hylomorphs and their constituting portions of matter are numerically different. As a nice consequence, it allows philosophers getting rid of counterparts to account for transworld identity of objects. On the other hand, and differently from the most part of multi-thingist theories, it is fully compatible with Classical Extensional Mereology. The dissertation is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, I revise some arguments against counterpart theory, and thus give indirect reason to prefer a standard account of transworld genuine identity. In the second chapter, I revise the major multi-thingist theories available and find them incompatible with Classical Extensional Mereology. Mereological hylomorphism is safe from this criticism, but arguably falls prey of a circularity of dependence. Then, I advance and describe Aristotelian Parts Nihilism. In the third chapter, I explore the issues with persistence and location, and show that Aristotelian Parts Nihilism fits Transdurantism well. In the fourth and last chapter, I defend the theory by some potential issues of causal overdetermination and coincidence. Importantly, I also explain how we can say ordinary material objects to be complex while still lacking proper parts.