Abstract
Mereotopology is that branch of the theory of regions concerned with topological properties such as connectedness. It is usually developed by considering the parthood relation that characterizes the, perhaps non-classical, mereology of Space (or Spacetime, or a substance filling Space or Spacetime) and then considering an extra primitive relation. My preferred choice of mereotopological primitive is interior parthood. This choice will have the advantage that filters may be defined with respect to it, constructing “points”, as Peter Roeper has done (“Region-based topology”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 26 (1997), 25–309). This paper generalizes Roeper’s result, relying only on mereotopological axioms, not requiring an underlying classical mereology, and not assuming the Axiom of Choice. I call the resulting mathematical system an approximate lattice, because although meets and joins are not assumed they are approximated. Theorems are proven establishing the existence and uniqueness of representations of approximate lattices, in which their members, the regions, are represented by sets of “points” in a topological “space”.
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I am indebted to Thomas Mormann with whom I have often discussed mereotopology, to Andrew Percy who checked all the mathematics and whose valuable comments helped me make the paper clearer, to the editor for his patience and especially to the referees for their helpful, detailed comments that helped me complete what was, I confess, a premature submission.
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Forrest, P. Mereotopology without Mereology. J Philos Logic 39, 229–254 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-010-9130-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-010-9130-x