Table of Contents
What is mereological universalism?
Mereological universalism—hereafter universalism—is the thesis that necessarily, any (material) objects whatsoever compose another (material) object. But if universalism is true, there is something composed by the Taj Mahal, the Stanley Cup, and Michael Jackson’s nose.
What is mereological reductionism?
Mereological reductionism is a doctrine to say that the whole can be reduced to the parts. But the mereological reductionist encounters at least two serious objections. One is dilemma style objection, and the other is so-called sinkhole objection.
What is gunk in philosophy?
In mereology, an area of philosophical logic, the term gunk applies to any whole whose parts all have further proper parts. That is, a gunky object is not made of indivisible atoms or simples. Because parthood is transitive, any part of gunk is itself gunk. If nihilism is necessarily true, then gunk is impossible.
What is the special composition question?
Peter van Inwagen, Terence Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč argue against ordinary inanimate objects on grounds that no view that accepts them can provide a satisfactory answer to the special composition question: the question of when a plurality of things composes some other thing.
What is the mereological theory of identity?
According to Plato, Heraclitus maintains that nothing retains its identity for any time at all: Plato’s interpretation requires that Heraclitus held what might be called the Mereological Theory of Identity (MTI), i.e., the view that the identity of an object depends on the identity of its component parts.
What is mereological Fusion?
For example, one may consider the idea that whenever there are some things, there exists a whole that consists exactly of those things—i.e., that there is always a mereological sum (or “fusion”) of two or more parts.
What is a mereological simple?
In contemporary mereology, a simple is any thing that has no proper parts. Simples are to be contrasted with atomless gunk (where something is “gunky” if it is such that every proper part has a further proper part).
What is the Mereological theory of identity?
Who is the championed the theory of Organicism?
At the turn of the 18th-century, Immanuel Kant championed a revival of organicisitic thought by stressing, in his written works, “the inter-relatedness of the organism and its parts[,] and the circular causality” inherent to the inextricable entanglement of the greater whole.
What is the relationship between the forms and ordinary objects?
Things of this sort are the Platonic Forms, abstract entities that exist independently of the sensible world. Ordinary objects are imperfect and changeable, but they faintly copy the perfect and immutable Forms.
Under what conditions do some objects compose another object?
Very simply, it states that objects need to be physically touching one another if they are to compose a further object. (CONTACT): for any xs (where those xs are material objects), there is a further material object, y, composed of those xs if and only if the xs are in contact with one another.
What is the meaning of Mereology?
Mereology (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole.