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Location and Functionality

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  • Carlo Rossi
Carlo Rossi
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1090

Published 2025-12-12

Keywords

  • Locación exacta,
  • Multi-locación,
  • Persistencia
  • Exact Location,
  • Multi-location,
  • Persistence
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Abstract

The notion of exact location has frequently been regarded in the contemporary debate as a fundamental and primitive relation. One of the controversial principles that has been thought to govern this relationship is Functionality. Functionality is a principle according to which no object can have more than one exact location. Contemporary theories of location have either assumed Functionality as an axiom or as a principle entailed by one of their locational definitions. In this paper, I examine the extant arguments in the literature in favour of Functionality, only to conclude that they do not suffice to secure its truth. Functionality, as some have wrongly argued, is not a metaphysically neutral principle that governs exact location for it imposes serious constraints on a number of views on the metaphysics of material things. Therefore, more caution is required when it comes to its acceptance.

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