Online research in philosophy

To what extend can genuinely mereological considerations apply to talk of wholes and parts in discussions of the relationship between individual persons and the social groups, etc. to which they belong?

In Structures in Science, Theo A. F. Kuipers presents a detailed analysis of reductive, including microreductive, explanations. One goal of a microreduction is to explain the laws governing a structured object in terms of laws about its parts, plus a description of its structure. Kuipers refers to structures in his book, and uses the idea of a "structure representation function," but does not characterize the relevant concept of structure. To characterize microreductions fully, we need an adequate characterization of the relevant sense of "structure." After discussing examples, I present general analyses of bonds and of structured wholes. My analyses apply from physics to the social sciences, the latter illustrated by a hypothetical robotic social structure. Since Kuipers' philosophical position appears to be generally compatible with my own, I do not critique of any part of his work. Instead, this article is intended to fill in a gap in his presentation.

What distinguishes a whole from an arbitrary sum of elements? I suggest a temporal and causal oriented approach. I defend two connected claims. The former is that existence is, by every means, coextensive with being the cause of a causal process. The latter is that a whole is the cause of a causal process with a joint effect. Thus, a whole is something that takes place in time. The approach endorses an unambiguous version of Restricted Composition that suits most commonsensical intuitions about wholes.

The assumption that wholes have properties, specifically causally efficacious properties, which the sum of its parts seem to lack, lends support to the argument that wholes are something more than the sum of their parts. The properties of the whole are taken to be the result of the particular arrangement of the whole’s parts. The rearrangement of parts makes new properties emerge for a particular whole. This creates hierarchical ontological levels of properties in an object. My purpose in this paper will be to undermine the preceding lines of thought as valid support for wholes being “over and above” the sums of their parts. I begin by pointing out that the costs of a theory where arrangement entails new, unique and distinct properties for a whole carry two unattractive commitments: a reliance on a scientifically disproved version of early Emergentism and causal redundancy. I, then, present an alternative theory to explain the relationship between the properties of wholes and arrangement: my contention will be that the properties that we attribute to wholes are actually the manifestation of preexisting, but heretofore unmanifested, properties of parts, which manifest only when a specific part comes in contact with another specific part in a particular arrangement. I argue that the properties of a part are all we need to give a complete account for the properties of a whole.

Atomists explain properties of wholes as compositions of properties of their parts; in particular properties of complex expressions as composed of properties of their parts. Especially, semantic atomists explain meanings of complex expressions as composed of meanings of their parts. Holists deny themselves this way: they insist that at least in some cases properties of wholes are more basic than, or not reducible to, properties of their parts; in particular, semantic holists claim that meanings of (at least some) wholes are more basic than meanings of parts. Now as atomists have composition as the way of getting themselves from the meanings of parts to the meanings of wholes, holists need something to get them from the meanings of wholes to those of their parts. What is usually invoked in this context is the concept of intersubstitutivity, which is, however, not always wholly clear.

This commentary on Søren Riis’s paper “Dwelling in-between walls” starts from a position of solidarity with its attempt to build a postphenomenological perspective on architecture and the built environment. It proposes however that a clearer view of a technological structure of experience may be obtained by finding technological-perceptual wholes that incorporate perceiver and perceived as well as the mediating apparatus. Parts and wholes may be formed as nested human-technological interiorities that have structured relations with what is outside—so that the outside constitutes an interiority in its turn which contextualises and situates the first. This nested structure raises questions about the way architects and urbanists see the built environment and understand inhabitation. It is hoped that this effort continues with conceptual and empirical work to research ways to make the human places of our built environment.