Colocationist Answers to the grounding problem

Abstract

According to colocationism, two different material objects can be colocated during their entire careers. The typical example is that of a statue and the lump of clay out of which it is made, both of which start to exist and cease to exist at exactly the same time. One of the main problems for colocationism is the grounding problem. Recently, several attractive colocationist answers to the problem have been formulated. In this paper I analyse the proposals by Kit Fine, Kathrin Koslicki, Noël Saenz and Catherine Sutton and conclude that all of them have problematic, unsatisfactory consequences, and this constitutes a strong reason against them. That, in turn, shows, I think, the difficulty of finding a satisfactory colocationist answer to the grounding problem, which continues to be a fundamental difficulty for the position.