The word on Twitter that Ted Sider is now a mereological nihilist (See here and here).
Evidently, he defended this view at the Pacific APA four days ago. I’ve already been regretting not going to the Pacific APA this year. All reports indicate that it was awesome, and this is just one more reason to regret not going. I would have loved to see this talk.
It looks like the papers are not available on the Pacific APA website anymore, and I checked Sider’s site to see if he had anything up there that looked like a work in progress on this topic. A quick scan of the titles didn’t reveal anything.
I’m curious to see what he says in response to this objection to Nihilism.
The Nihilist might reject that there are Gunky worlds without committing himself to the necessity of atomism. Perhaps he can say that there are worlds that contain matter filled regions and that each such region has a matter filled proper subregion. This possibility makes us think that Gunk is possible because we assume that when a region is matter filled, it contains an object. But, it might be that there are matter filled regions that do not contain any material objects. If this is correct, then a world that contains matter filled regions, each one of which has matter filled proper subregions, is strictly speaking a world that has no material objects (and hence no atoms).
He also rejected metaphysical possibility at the APA.
seriously? If you spot this paper go up on-line will you give me a heads up?