Date of Award
5-1-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Philosophy
First Advisor
Robert Barnard
Second Advisor
Neil Manson
Third Advisor
Donovan Wishon
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This paper argues that the Special Composition Question has no substantive answer, not because compositional talk is empty but because the physical structure it tracks does not have the form that would privilege a unique answer. The argument accepts Sider’s methodological premise that the world must provide structure beyond description if ontological vocabulary is to mean anything, and deploys that apparatus against his specific application of it to composition. Constraint processes among a system’s parts – the forces and interactions that hold rigid bodies together, maintain organisms, bind solar systems – satisfy every condition Lewis required of reference magnets. They are mind-independent, mathematically precise, and similarity-grounding. A measure drawn from classical Lagrangian mechanics, D(S), makes this processual structure tractable at the scale where mereological disputes are posed. But D(S) values admit of degrees with no privileged threshold. The physical facts constrain the space of admissible quantifier meanings without selecting a unique meaning. The residual indeterminacy is semantic – a matter of which quantifier meaning is operative – not ontic. The same apparatus blocks a recent argument from Rohan Sud that quantifier variance is committed to ontic vagueness: D(S) is precise, so the sorites does not run, and the residual indeterminacy about where the compositional threshold falls is between languages rather than within the world. The result is that quantifier variance and naturalism are genuinely compatible within the domain of the Special Composition Question.
Recommended Citation
Huling, Isaac Alexander, "A Revised Quantifier Variance and Its Implications on Vagueness" (2026). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8832.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/8832