March 23, 1950

Peter M. Simons (March 23, 1950) is a professor of philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, a position he has held since 2009. Simons' previous career in academe includes time as Assistant Librarian at the University of Manchester, (1975–77), and then a Lecturer in Philosophy at Bolton Inst., 1977–80. From 1980-2009 he held positions as philosophy professor at the University of Salzburg, and then University of Leeds. His books include Parts, (1987) and Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski, (1992).

This last book contains a discussion of a basic philosophical theme, how the one contains many, how cells for instance, compose a body. We read:

'...Husserl's concepts of dependence and independence could contribute valuable insights to the problem of substance ...[for Brentano]...[Consider] certain cases of disjunctive satisfaction. Suppose for instance that Brown is a cat -owner. Then as such he must possess some cat. But he may possess more than one, each of which would, on its own, be sufficient to render him a cat-owner. At any time at which he possessed more than one cat, the loss of one would not affect his status as a cat-owner. Indeed, provided he replaced cats as they died, or he lost them, etc, he could, barring catastrophe, remain a cat-owner far longer than the life of any of his cats.

'....[Such] considerations apply to those parts of a thing which are essential to its being the sort of thing it is, but which can suffer replacement without the things ceasing to exist, either because it has more than one and can acquire more as need be, or if it can temporarily survive without one. The replacement of cells in organisms gives an example of the first kind while the repairing of machines gives one of the second.

'[This is how we have] defined the dependence and independence, whether essential or not, of individuals...'

The question of how things coinhere underlies multiple issues, such as language and
its referents, and has been a critical question for humanity since a forgotten scene on an Ionian beach.

Professor Simons married in 1973 Susan Walker, and they have two children. His Who's Who entry mentions his hobbies of "walking, choral singing, reading history, classical music."