I’ve been writing about Weak Substantivalism. Here are the two previous posts.

1. Two Kinds of Substantivalism
2. They Are There: Some Consequences for Weak Substantivalism

In the second post, I promised to post about some more counter-intuitive consequences of weak substantivalism. Here they are.

More Counter-Intuitive Consequences for Weak Substantivalism
Suppose we have an Andy-shaped bag of turnips. Suppose I pick out the region of space that it occupies with the word ‘there’ – Now consider proposition (C).

(C) I could have been there.

(C) seems true. If Weak Substantivalism is true, then (C) is committed to the claim that I could have been a bag of turnips – which is false.

If you think it is metaphysically possible for me to have been a bag of turnips (which it’s not), we can press this point a bit more. Suppose I’m trying to make a point to the class about Weak Substantivalism, and I bring an Andy-Shaped Bag of Turnips to class to talk about the view. I can’t decide where to stand. I’m about to stand to the left, but at the last minute decide to stand more toward the right. I place Andy-shaped bag of turnips in the spot where I was going to stand. Then an anvil drops from the ceiling and crushes the turnips. I say, “Whew, I’m glad I wasn’t there. I almost was there.” Consider (D)

(D) I was almost there

If Weak Substantivalism is true, then (D) says that I was almost a bag of turnips. That’s definitely false. However, (D) is definitely true.

Note: All of this is on the assumption that weak substantivalists will collapse the location relation to the identity relation – In the comments to my previous post, I noted that weak substantivalists could collapse the location relation to the part-whole relation. However, I think many of the counter-intuitive consequences will remain.