Paradox

CHRYSIPPUS ON PEOPLE PARTS 139claim to be using the same reasoning as Chrysippus. Burke’sreasoning is certainly different from the relativism aboutidentity that Sedley attributes to Chrysippus. Burke thinks itis absurd that two things could be in the same place at thesame time. Burke is not placated by the qualification that thesorts must be distinct. If x and y share all the same parts, thenhow could they fail to be of the same sort? Any property of xwould be shared by y.Following Aristotle, Burke thinks there is a hierarchy ofsubstances. Once a mere collection of bricks is arranged intoa patio, the mere collection no longer exists. The bricks thatnow compose the patio can no longer fall under the lower sort“mere collection of bricks” because it would be qualitativelyidentical with a patio. Since nothing would stop the collectionof bricks from being a patio, it would be a patio rather thananything less than a patio. Higher substances dominate lowersubstances in the sense that their “persistence conditions”prevail. (Persistence conditions are rules for decidingwhether an object survives a given change. A patio survivesreplacement of a brick but a set of bricks does not.) Burkethinks Theon is a lower substance than Dion because Theonhas been defined as Dion’s body minus exactly one foot. Giventhe stipulated meaning, Theon would perish if another footwere removed.The practice of applying the personal name Theon to abody part exacerbates our puzzlement; we tend to assumeTheon names a man. But “Theon” only labels a large bodypart. Before the amputation, Theon can exist because it is thedominant substance in that region of space. But after theamputation, Theon would be colocated with Dion. Since Dionis a higher substance than Theon, the persistence conditionsof the object are those of Dion rather than of Theon. Theon