Switch to: References

Citations of:

Mereology

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2016)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Going Out of My Head: An Evolutionary Proposal Concerning the “Why” of Sentience.Stan Klein, Bill N. Nguyen & Blossom M. Zhang - forthcoming - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
    The explanatory challenge of sentience is known as the “hard problem of consciousness”: How does subjective experience arise from physical objects and their relations? Despite some optimistic claims, the perennial struggle with this question shows little evidence of imminent resolution. In this article I focus on the “why” rather than on the “how” of sentience. Specifically, why did sentience evolve in organic lifeforms? From an evolutionary perspective this question can be framed: “What adaptive problem(s) did organisms face in their evolutionary (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ontology of Divinity.Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.) - 2024 - De Gruyter.
    This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Cardinal Composition.Lisa Vogt & Jonas Werner - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (4):1457-1479.
    The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, or so (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • (1 other version)Mathematics is Ontology? A Critique of Badiou's Ontological Framing of Set Theory.Roland Bolz - 2020 - Filozofski Vestnik 2 (41):119-142.
    This article develops a criticism of Alain Badiou’s assertion that “mathematics is ontology.” I argue that despite appearances to the contrary, Badiou’s case for bringing set theory and ontology together is problematic. To arrive at this judgment, I explore how a case for the identification of mathematics and ontology could work. In short, ontology would have to be characterised to make it evident that set theory can contribute to it fundamentally. This is indeed how Badiou proceeds in Being and Event. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Mereological Bimodal Logics.Li Dazhu & Yanjing Wang - 2022 - Review of Symbolic Logic 15 (4):823-858.
    In this paper, using a propositional modal language extended with the window modality, we capture the first-order properties of various mereological theories. In this setting, $\Box \varphi $ reads all the parts (of the current object) are $\varphi $, interpreted on the models with a whole-part binary relation under various constraints. We show that all the usual mereological theories can be captured by modal formulas in our language via frame correspondence. We also correct a mistake in the existing completeness proof (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • A Nominalist Alternative to Reference by Abstraction.Gareth Rhys Pearce - 2022 - Theoria 1:1-12.
    Theoria, EarlyView. -/- In his recent book Thin Objects, Øystein Linnebo (2018) argues for the existence of a hierarchy of abstract objects, sufficient to model ZFC, via a novel and highly interesting argument that relies on a process called dynamic abstraction. This paper presents a way for a nominalist, someone opposed to the existence of abstract objects, to avoid Linnebo's conclusion by rejecting his claim that certain abstraction principles are sufficient for reference (RBA). Section 1 of the paper explains Linnebo's (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • An Egalitarian Account of Composition and Realization.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2022 - The Monist 105 (2):276-292.
    I argue that wholes are neither identical to nor distinct from their parts. Instead, wholes are invariants under some transformations in their parts. Similarly, higher-level properties are neither identical to nor distinct from their lower-level realizers. Instead, higher-level properties are aspects of their realizers that are invariant under some transformations in their realizers. Nowhere in this picture is there any ontological hierarchy between levels of composition or realization. Neither wholes nor their parts are more fundamental. Neither is prior. Neither reduces (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On the Overlap Between Everything and Nothing.Massimiliano Carrara, Filippo Mancini & Jeroen Smid - forthcoming - Logic and Logical Philosophy.
    Graham Priest has recently proposed a solution to the problem of the One and the Many which involves inconsistent objects and a non-transitive identity relation. We show that his solution entails either that the object everything is identical with the object nothing or that they are mutual parts; depending on whether Priest goes for an extensional or a non-extensional mereology.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Atomism, Causalism and the Existence of a First Cause.Emanuel Rutten - 2012 - In A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments: Towards a Renewed Case for Theism. VU Publishers. pp. 123-135.
    This paper provides a new first cause argument by showing that atomism, i.e. the thesis that each composite object is composed of simple objects, together with causalism, understood in this paper as the thesis that every object is a cause or has a cause, logically imply the existence of a first cause if some additional general premises regarding the interplay between parthood, composition and causation are accepted. Thus it is shown that a commitment to atomism, causalism and the additional premises (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Essays on the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics.Eddy Keming Chen - 2019 - Dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
    What is the proper metaphysics of quantum mechanics? In this dissertation, I approach the question from three different but related angles. First, I suggest that the quantum state can be understood intrinsically as relations holding among regions in ordinary space-time, from which we can recover the wave function uniquely up to an equivalence class (by representation and uniqueness theorems). The intrinsic account eliminates certain conventional elements (e.g. overall phase) in the representation of the quantum state. It also dispenses with first-order (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Opening a Can of Spacetime Worms: The Metaphysics of Persistence.Danny George Wardle - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Adelaide
    This thesis is composed of three essays on the perdurantist approach to persistence and identity over time. In Chapter 1, I discuss how the following papers are to be understood as parts of a unified perdurantist account of persistence over time. This chapter also outlines some of my philosophical assumptions and provides some background information about the metaphysics of persistence. In Chapter 2, I respond to the objection that the worm theory is unable to account for our intuitions about ordinary (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Imaginative Animals: Leibniz's Logic of Imagination.Lucia Oliveri - 2021 - Stoccarda, Germania: Steiner Verlag.
    Through the reconstruction of Leibniz's theory of the degrees of knowledge, this e-book investigates and explores the intrinsic relationship of imagination with space and time. The inquiry into this relationship defines the logic of imagination that characterizes both human and non-human animals, albeit differently, making them two different species of imaginative animals. -/- Lucia Oliveri explains how the emergence of language in human animals goes hand in hand with the emergence of thought and a different form of rationality constituted by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Mind the Gap: The Space between Coincidence and Colocation.Jeroen Smid - 2021 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (1):57-73.
    In debates about the metaphysics of material objects examples of colocated objects are commonly taken to be examples of coincidence too. But the argument that colocation is best understood as involving coincidence is never spelled out. This paper shows under what conditions colocation entails coincidence and argues that the entailment depends on a principle that actually rules out certain forms of colocation. This undermines the argument from colocation to coincidence.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Bound State Answer to the Special Composition Question.Claudio Calosi - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (3):486-503.
    This paper provides the first thorough assessment of a physics-based answer, the Bound State Answer, to the Special Composition Question. According to the BSA some objects compose something if they are in a common bound state. The reasons to endorse such an answer, in particular, motivations coming from empirical adequacy and conservativeness, precision, simplicity, and parsimony, are critically addressed. I then go on to compare the BSA to other moderate answers to the SCQ and consider whether objections raised against such (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Divine Simplicity.Joshua Reginald Sijuwade - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1):143-179.
    This article aims to provide a consistent explication of the doctrine of Divine Simplicity. To achieve this end, a re-construal of the doctrine is made within an “aspectival trope-theoretic” metaphysical framework, which will ultimately enable the doctrine to be elucidated in a consistent manner, and the Plantingian objections raised against it will be shown to be unproblematic.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Against Methodological Continuity and Metaphysical Knowledge.Simon Allzén - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-20.
    The main purpose of this paper is to refute the metaphysicians ‘methodological continuation’ argument supporting epistemic realism in metaphysics. This argument aims to show that scientific realists have to accept that metaphysics is as rationally justified as science given that they both employ inference to the best explanation, i.e. that metaphysics and science are methodologically continuous. I argue that the reasons given by scientific realists as to why inference to the best explanation is reliable in science do not constitute a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • On the Possibility of Presentism with Occurrents.Marco Marabello - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (5):2173-2188.
    This paper defends the possibility of admitting occurrents in a presentist ontology. Two ways of doing so are proposed, the first one involves Meinongian presentism. By using the notion of non-existent object and coherently modifying some mereological principle, it is argued, the presentist can allow for occurrents. The second proposal involves ex-concrete objects. Ex-concrete objects, i.e. objects that are contingently not concrete, have been used by Linsky and Zalta, 431-458, 1994), Williamson in the modal metaphysics debate, by Orilia, 589-607, 2016) (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Experiential holism in time.Philippe Chuard - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (4):619-637.
    Temporally extended experiences, experiential holists have it, are not reducible to successions of their temporal parts because some whole experiences determine their parts (in some way). This paper suggests, first, that some forms of experiential holism are in fact consistent with the rival atomist view (that experiences are successions of their parts) and, second, that the main reasons advanced for experiential holism are compatible with atomism too. The paper then looks at how holistic determination of its parts by a whole (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The question about material composition as a question about boundaries.Gonzalo Germán Núñez Erices - 2019 - Estudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 59.
    Since Peter van Inwagen in his book Material Beings raised The Special Composition Question, many lines have been written about the conditions for two or more material objects to compose a further object. This paper proposes a study of the relationship between composition and the notion of boundary. The question about composition entails drawing a boundary to determine when it occurs and when it does not. There are three traditional answers: restrictivism, universalism, and nihilism. While according to restrictivism, composition occurs (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The limits of classical mereology: Mixed fusions and the failures of mereological hybridism.Joshua Kelleher - 2020 - Dissertation, The University of Queensland
    In this thesis I argue against unrestricted mereological hybridism, the view that there are absolutely no constraints on wholes having parts from many different logical or ontological categories, an exemplar of which I take to be ‘mixed fusions’. These are composite entities which have parts from at least two different categories – the membered (as in classes) and the non-membered (as in individuals). As a result, mixed fusions can also be understood to represent a variety of cross-category summation such as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Irreducibly Thick Evaluation is not Thinly Evaluative.N. D. Cannon - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (3-4):651-666.
    In this paper, I criticize the pairing of irreducible thickness with the traditional view of evaluation which says evaluation is a matter of encoding good or bad in some way. To do this, I first explicate the determination view, which holds that irreducibly thick concepts are to thin concepts as determinates are to determinables. I then show that, even if the determination view did establish irreducible thickness, it would not have proven that the evaluative is well understood as being an (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The Many and the One: A Philosophical Study of Plural Logic.Salvatore Florio & Øystein Linnebo - 2021 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    Plural expressions found in natural languages allow us to talk about many objects simultaneously. Plural logic — a logical system that takes plurals at face value — has seen a surge of interest in recent years. This book explores its broader significance for philosophy, logic, and linguistics. What can plural logic do for us? Are the bold claims made on its behalf correct? After introducing plural logic and its main applications, the book provides a systematic analysis of the relation between (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Not Another Brick in the Wall: an Extensional Mereology for Potential Parts.Ryan Miller - manuscript
    Part is not a univocal term. Uses of parthood and composition that do not obey any supplementation principle have a long philosophical tradition and strong support from contemporary physics. We call such uses potential parts. This paper first shows why potential parts are important and incompatible with supplementation, then provides a formal mereology for such parts inspired by the path-integral approach to quantum electrodynamics.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Spinoza on Composition, Monism, and Beings of Reason.Róbert Mátyási - 2020 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1):1-16.
    In this paper, I argue that Spinoza holds a perspectivalist view of mereological composition, a form of anti-realism. The paper has two parts: In the first half of the paper, I introduce interpretive puzzles for the standard realist reading of Spinoza’s mereology. In the second half of the paper, I discuss Spinoza’s positive view on mereological composition and present a perspectivalist reading that avoids the interpretive puzzles.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Composition, identity and plural ontology.Roberto Loss - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9193-9210.
    According to ‘Strong Composition as Identity’, if an entity is composed of a plurality of entities, it is identical to them. As it has been argued in the literature, SCAI appears to give rise to some serious problems which seem to suggest that SCAI-theorists should take their plural quantifier to be governed by some ‘weak’ plural comprehension principle and, thus, ‘exclude’ some kinds of pluralities from their plural ontology. The aim of this paper is to argue that, contrary to what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Between Atomism and Superatomism.T. Scott Dixon - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 49 (6):1215-1241.
    There are at least three vaguely atomistic principles that have come up in the literature, two explicitly and one implicitly. First, standard atomism is the claim that everything is composed of atoms, and is very often how atomism is characterized in the literature. Second, superatomism is the claim that parthood is well-founded, which implies that every proper parthood chain terminates, and has been discussed as a stronger alternative to standard atomism. Third, there is a principle that lies between these two (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • What it takes to be hunky.Daniel Giberman - 2020 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (1):51-57.
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Formulating Avicenna's Argument of Truthful Ones in the Book of Nejat Based on the First-Order Predicate Logic.Homa Ranjbar, Davood Hosseini & Mohammad Saeedimehr - 2013 - Avicennian Philosophy Journal 17 (50):17-40.
    According to a common definition, the argument of truthful ones is an argument in which the existence of Necessary Being is proved with no presumption of the existence of the possible being. Avicenna proposed different versions of this style of argument and the version in the book of Nejat is one of them. This paper is intended to examine the possibility of proving the logical validity of this version in first-order predicate logic and explain the principles which the argument is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Maurinian Truths : Essays in Honour of Anna-Sofia Maurin on her 50th Birthday.Robin Stenwall & Tobias Hansson Wahlberg (eds.) - 2019 - Lund, Sverige: Department of Philosophy, Lund University.
    This book is in honour of Professor Anna-Sofia Maurin on her 50th birthday. It consists of eighteen essays on metaphysical issues written by Swedish and international scholars.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The Mereology of Emergence.Ryan Miller - 2019 - Dissertation, The University of St Andrews
    The debate about the ontological innocence of mereology has generally been framed as a debate about the plausibility of Universal Fusion. Ontologically loaded fusions must be more than the sum of their parts, and this seems to violate parsimony if fusion is universal. Less attention has been paid to the question of what sort of emergence mereological fusions must exhibit if they are irreducible to their parts. The philosophy of science literature provides several models of such strong emergence. Examining those (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The fundamental: Ungrounded or all-grounding?Stephan Leuenberger - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2647-2669.
    Fundamentality plays a pivotal role in discussions of ontology, supervenience, and possibility, and other key topics in metaphysics. However, there are two different ways of characterising the fundamental: as that which is not grounded, and as that which is the ground of everything else. I show that whether these two characterisations pick out the same property turns on a principle—which I call “Dichotomy”—that is of independent interest in the theory of ground: that everything is either fully grounded or not even (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Species are, at the same time, kinds and individuals: a causal argument based on an empirical approach to species identity.Elena Casetta & Davide Vecchi - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):3007-3025.
    After having reconstructed a minimal biological characterisation of species, we endorse an “empirical approach” based on the idea that it is the peculiar evolutionary history of the species at issue—its peculiar origination process, its peculiar metapopulation structure and the peculiar mixture and strength of homeostatic processes vis à vis heterostatic ones—that determines species’ identity at a time and through time. We then explore the consequences of the acceptance of the empirical approach in settling the individuals versus kinds dispute. In particular, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Dividing Plato’s Kinds.Fernando Muniz & George Rudebusch - 2018 - Phronesis 63 (4):392-407.
    A dilemma has stymied interpretations of the Stranger’s method of dividing kinds into subkinds in Plato’sSophistandStatesman. The dilemma assumes that the kinds are either extensions or intensions. Now kinds divide like extensions, not intensions. But extensions cannot explain the distinct identities of kinds that possess the very same members. We propose understanding a kind as like an animal body—the Stranger’s simile for division—possessing both an extension and an intension. We find textual support in the Stranger’s paradigmatic four steps for collecting (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Composition and the Logic of Location: An Argument for Regionalism.Cody Gilmore & Matt Leonard - 2020 - Mind 129 (513):159-178.
    Ned Markosian has recently defended a new theory of composition, which he calls regionalism : some material objects xx compose something if and only if there is a material object located at the fusion of the locations of xx. Markosian argues that regionalism follows from what he calls the subregion theory of parthood. Korman and Carmichael agree. We provide countermodels to show that regionalism does not follow from, even together with fourteen potentially implicit background principles. We then show that regionalism (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Is Mereology Ontologically Innocent? Well, it Depends….Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (2):395-424.
    Mereology, the theory of parts and wholes, is sometimes used as a framework for categorisation because it is regarded as ontologically innocent in the sense that the mereological fusion of some entities is nothing over and above the entities. In this paper it is argued that an adequate answer to the question of whether the thesis of the ontological innocence of mereology holds relies crucially on the underlying theory of reference. It is then shown that upholding the thesis comes at (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Prolegomena to Music Semantics.Philippe Schlenker - 2019 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (1):35-111.
    We argue that a formal semantics for music can be developed, although it will be based on very different principles from linguistic semantics and will yield less precise inferences. Our framework has the following tenets: Music cognition is continuous with normal auditory cognition. In both cases, the semantic content derived from an auditory percept can be identified with the set of inferences it licenses on its causal sources, analyzed in appropriately abstract ways. What is special about music semantics is that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Formal ontology of space, time, and physical entities in classical mechanics.Thomas Bittner - 2018 - Applied ontology 13 (2):135-179.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Enactment and Construction of the Cognitive Niche: Toward an Ontology of the Mind- World Connection.Konrad Werner - 2020 - Synthese 197 (3):1313-1341.
    The paper discusses the concept of the cognitive niche and distinguishes the latter from the metabolic niche. By using these posits I unpack certain ideas that are crucial for the enactivist movement, especially for its original formulation proposed by Varela, Thompson and Rosh. Drawing on the ontology of location, boundaries, and parthood, I argue that enacting the world can be seen as the process of cognitive niche construction. Moreover, it turns out that enactivism—as seen through the lens of the conceptual (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Composition as pattern.Steve Petersen - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (5):1119-1139.
    I argue for patternism, a new answer to the question of when some objects compose a whole. None of the standard principles of composition comfortably capture our natural judgments, such as that my cat exists and my table exists, but there is nothing wholly composed of them. Patternism holds, very roughly, that some things compose a whole whenever together they form a “real pattern”. Plausibly we are inclined to acknowledge the existence of my cat and my table but not of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Composition, identity, and emergence.Claudio Calosi - 2016 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 25 (3):429-443.
    Composition as Identity is the thesis that a whole is, strictly and literally, identical to its parts, considered collectively. McDaniel [2008] argues against CAI in that it prohibits emergent properties. Recently Sider [2014] exploited the resources of plural logic and extensional mereology to undermine McDaniel’s argument. He shows that CAI identifies extensionally equivalent pluralities – he calls it the Collapse Principle – and then shows how this identification rescues CAI from the emergentist argument. In this paper I first give a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • What is Wrong with Self-Grounding?David Mark Kovacs - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (6):1157-1180.
    Many philosophers embrace grounding, supposedly a central notion of metaphysics. Grounding is widely assumed to be irreflexive, but recently a number of authors have questioned this assumption: according to them, it is at least possible that some facts ground themselves. The primary purpose of this paper is to problematize the notion of self-grounding through the theoretical roles usually assigned to grounding. The literature typically characterizes grounding as at least playing two central theoretical roles: a structuring role and an explanatory role. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Engineering ontologies: Foundations and theories from philosophy and logical theory.Nicola Guarino & Barry Smith - 2006 - In Nicola Guarino & Barry Smith (eds.), Engineering ontologies: Foundations and theories from philosophy and logical theory. pp. 1-13.
    Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. ‘Ontology’ is often used by philosophers as a synonym for ‘metaphysics’ (literally: ‘what comes after the Physics’), a term which was used by early students of Aristotle to refer to what Aristotle himself called ‘first philosophy’. The term ‘ontology’ (or ontologia) was itself coined in 1613, independently, by two philosophers, Rudolf Göckel (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Against Lewisian Modal Realism from a Metaontological Point of View.Tora Koyama - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1207-1225.
    Modal realism is an ontological position made familiar by David Lewis, according to which there exist possible worlds other than the actual world that we inhabit. It is hard to uphold modal realism, and indeed modal realism has only a few advocates. However, as most contemporary metaphysicians agree, this does not mean that it is easy to refute modal realism. In this paper, I argue against modal realism from a metaontological point of view. First, I provide a precise formulation of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A Sudden Collapse to Nihilism.Roberto Loss - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (271):370-375.
    According to Composition is Identity, a whole is literally identical to the plurality of its parts. According to Mereological Nihilism, nothing has proper parts. In this note, it is argued that Composition is Identity can be shown to entail Mereological Nihilism in a much more simple and direct way than the one recently proposed by Claudio Calosi.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Much Ado About Nothing.Graham Priest - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Logic 11 (2).
    The point of this paper is to bring together three topics: non-existent objects, mereology, and nothing. There are important inter-connections, which it is my aim to spell out, in the service of an account of the last of these.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • Metaphysical Interdependence.Naomi Thompson - 2016 - In Mark Jago (ed.), Reality Making. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 38-56.
    It is commonly assumed that grounding relations are asymmetric. Here I develop and argue for a theory of metaphysical structure that takes grounding to be nonsymmetric rather than asymmetric. Even without infinite descending chains of dependence, it might be that every entity is grounded in some other entity. Having first addressed an immediate objection to the position under discussion, I introduce two examples of symmetric grounding. I give three arguments for the view that grounding is nonsymmetric (I call this view (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   66 citations  
  • Homunculi Are People Too! Lewis's Definition of Personhood Debugged.Cody Gilmore - 2017 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (1):54-60.
    David Lewis defends the following "non-circular definition of personhood": "something is a continuant person if and only if it is a maximal R-interrelated aggregate of person-stages. That is: if and only if it is an aggregate of person-stages, each of which is R-related to all the rest (and to itself), and it is a proper part of no other such aggregate." I give a counterexample, involving a person who is a part of another, much larger person, with a separate mental (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The denial of moral dilemmas as a regulative ideal.Michael Cholbi - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):268-289.
    The traditional debate about moral dilemmas concerns whether there are circumstances in which an agent is subject to two obligations that cannot both be fulfilled. Realists maintain there are. Irrealists deny this. Here I defend an alternative, methodologically-oriented position wherein the denial of genuine moral dilemmas functions as a regulative ideal for moral deliberation and practice. That is, moral inquiry and deliberation operate on the implicit assumption that there are no genuine moral dilemmas. This view is superior to both realism (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Composition is Identity and Mereological Nihilism.Claudio Calosi - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (263):219-235.
    Composition is Identity is the thesis that a whole is, strict and literally, its parts considered collectively. Mereological Nihilism is the thesis that there are no composite objects whatsoever instead. This paper argues that they are equivalent, at least insofar as Composition is Identity is phrased in a particular way. It then addresses some consequences of such equivalence.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Finding the world in the wave function: some strategies for solving the macro-object problem.Alyssa Ney - 2020 - Synthese 197 (10):4227-4249.
    Realists wanting to capture the facts of quantum entanglement in a metaphysical interpretation find themselves faced with several options: to grant some species of fundamental nonseparability, adopt holism, or to view localized spacetime systems as ultimately reducible to a higher-dimensional entity, the quantum state or wave function. Those adopting the latter approach and hoping to view the macroscopic world as grounded in the quantum wave function face the macro-object problem. The challenge is to articulate the metaphysical relation obtaining between three-dimensional (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations