ABSTRACT
Substantial Priority offers several theoretical advantages over Merrick's own response to the Argument from Vagueness. Merricks endorses the failure of PDP solely for conscious composite wholes, the defender of Substantial Priority makes no such restriction. Abelard's solution to the Problem of the Many shares many similarities with David Lewis's response to the puzzle. An appeal to Maximality as a stand-alone solution to the Problem of the Many has been subjected to some important objections. Considerations from causal overdetermination constitute a family of arguments aimed at the denial of Existence for either the entire class or a particular subset of the class of composite objects. Substantial Priority construes composite substances as not only instantiating ontologically emergent properties, but also as ontologically emergent wholes in their own right. Substantial Priority takes aim at the hegemony of the underlying fundamental mereology that serves to generate the Argument from Causal Overdetermination in the first place.
