Oxford Handbooks Online (
2016)
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Abstract
When some objects are the parts of another object, they compose that object and
that object is composite. This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions
about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions.
In §1, we review some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding
the nature of composition. In §2, we consider some answers to the question: which
pluralities of objects together compose something? As we will see, the dominant answers
are all of them and none of them. In §§3-4, we examine one of the main arguments that
has driven philosophers to these extreme answers: the argument from vagueness. In §5,
we turn to the question of whether composition is unique: is it sometimes the case that
some things compose more than one thing? Finally, in §6, we turn from the question of
which composites exist to the question of which composites exist fundamentally.