Mereology

Edited by Meg Wallace (University of Kentucky)
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  1. On the Necessity of Priority Monism.Stephen Harrop - 2022 - Erkenntnis (2):685-703.
    Priority monism is the doctrine that there is only one basic object: the entire cosmos. Priority monists often take this to be a metaphysically necessary thesis. I explore the consequences of modalizing the priority monist thesis. I argue that, modulo some assumptions, the modalized thesis entails the necessary existence of the actual cosmos. I further argue that, if the modalized thesis is true, and the actual cosmos necessarily exists, then the only possible concrete objects are the actually existing ones.
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  2. On Mereology and Metricality.Zee R. Perry - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23.
    This article motivates and develops a reductive account of the structure of certain physical quantities in terms of their mereology. That is, I argue that quantitative relations like "longer than" or "3.6-times the volume of" can be analyzed in terms of necessary constraints those quantities put on the mereological structure of their instances. The resulting account, I argue, is able to capture the intuition that these quantitative relations are intrinsic to the physical systems they’re called upon to describe and explain.
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  3. Totalismus a holismus.Radim Palouš - 1996 - Praha: Karolinum.
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  4. Zong ti xing yu wu tuo bang: ren ben zhu yi Makesi zhu yi di zong ti fan chou.Kangzhi Zhang - 1998 - Beijing: Jing xiao xin hua shu dian.
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  5. Dispositions, Mereology and Panpsychism: The Case for Phenomenal Properties.Simone Gozzano - 2024 - In Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts, and Wholes. New York: Routledge. pp. 227 - 242.
    My interest in this chapter is to investigate this crossroad as applied to mental properties, considered powers. In particular, I scrutinize the possibility of taking the phenomenal property of feeling pain as a complex power or disposition. This possibility comes in handy in discussing panpsychism, the view that the ultimate elements of reality are phenomenal properties, which would ground physical properties as well.
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  6. The Many-Subjects Argument against Physicalism.Brian Cutter - forthcoming - In Geoffrey Lee & Adam Pautz (eds.), The Importance of Being Conscious. Oxford University Press.
    The gist of the many-subjects argument is that, given physicalism, it’s hard to avoid the absurd result that there are many conscious subjects in your vicinity with more-or-less the same experiences as you. The most promising ways of avoiding this result have a consequence almost as bad: that there are many things in your vicinity that are in a state only trivially different from being conscious, a state with similar normative significance. This paper clarifies and defends three versions of the (...)
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  7. Fazang’s mereology as a model for holism.Felipe Cuervo Restrepo - forthcoming - Philosophy East and West.
    Recently, much attention has been given to Buddhism as a precursor to contemporary holistic theories, and more specifically to the Huayan school’s radical holistic metaphysics (often given the metaphorical name of The Net of Indra), as well as to Huayan’s most elaborate theoretician, Fazang. Nevertheless, contemporary interpretations of Fazang have been weighted by either too strict an adherence to atomistic logic or by unfortunate translations. In this paper, I present new translations of the key passages of Fazang’s The Rafter Dialogue, (...)
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  8. Personal ontology: mystery and its consequences.Andrew Brenner - 2024 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    What are we? Are we, for example, souls, organisms, brains, or something else? In this book, Andrew Brenner argues that there are principled obstacles to our discovering the answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The main competing accounts of personal ontology hold that we are either souls (or composites of soul and body), or we are composite physical objects of some sort, but, as Brenner shows, arguments for either of these options can be parodied and transformed into their opposites. Brenner (...)
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  9. "Do Thoughts Have Parts? Peter Abelard: Yes! Alberic of Paris: No!".Boaz Faraday Schuman - forthcoming - British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
    Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, “Socrates is running”, you begin by uttering the subject term ("Socrates"), before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding predications in thought also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. (...)
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  10. Carving Up the Network of Powers.Aaron Cotnoir - 2023 - In Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts and Wholes. Routledge.
    Do powers have parts? Mereological thinking is typically guided by two different metaphors: building versus carving. The building picture treats wholes as constructed from fundamental bits; the carving treats wholes as the result of carving some interconnected space. After considering some suggestions for how to view powers as built from other components, this chapter opts for the carving picture and suggests that a mereology of powers can be generated by carving the underlying space of an interconnected web of fundamental powers. (...)
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  11. What is priority monism? Reply to Kovacs.Damiano Costa - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the basic concrete entity on which each of its parts depend. Kovacs has recently argued that none of the classical notions of dependence could be used to spell out priority monism. I argue that four notions of dependence – namely rigid existential dependence, generic existential dependence, explanatory dependence, and generalised explanatory dependence – can indeed be used to spell out priority monism, and specify the conditions under which this is possible.
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  12. Heraclitean Flux Metaphysics.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2023 - Metaphysica: International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics 24 (2):299-322.
    This essay offers an original interpretation and defense of the doctrine of flux, as it is presented in Plato’s Theaetetus. The methodology of the paper’s analysis is in the style of rational reconstruction, and it is highly analytic in scope, in the sense that I will focus on the text itself, and only on certain parts of it too, while ignoring the rest of Plato’s extensive corpus, and without worrying about whether, how, and to what extent the interpretation of the (...)
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  13. Mereology in Kal'm A New Reading of the Proof from Accidents for Creation.Ayman Shihadeh - 2021 - Kader 19 (1):347-376.
    The objective of this article is twofold. First, it investigates mereology in medieval Islamic theology, particularly the theologians’ claim that the whole is identical to its parts and accordingly that at least some attributes common to the parts must by extension be attributed of the whole. This claim was refuted by philosophers and, from the eleventh century onwards, an increasing number of theologians. Second, it offers a new interpretation of the standard theological proof from accidents for creation ex nihilo, to (...)
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  14. Open Problems in the Development of a Quantum Mereology.Federico Holik & Juan Pablo Jorge - 2023 - In Jonas R. B. Arenhart & Raoni W. Arroyo (eds.), Non-Reflexive Logics, Non-Individuals, and the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: Essays in Honour of the Philosophy of Décio Krause. Springer Verlag. pp. 157-176.
    Mereology deals with the study of the relations between wholes and parts. In this work we will discuss different developments and open problems related to the formulation of a quantum mereology. In particular, we will discuss different advances in the development of formal systems aimed to describe the whole-parts relationship in the context of quantum theory.
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  15. Powers as Mereological Lawmakers.Michael Traynor - 2023 - In Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers. London: Routledge. pp. 83-95.
    This chapter explores a potential analogy between mereological principles and laws of nature. Against a backdrop of what Marmodoro has termed ‘power structuralism’ (and a rejection of a Humean worldview), the connection between parthood and modality may be richer than has hitherto been considered. Mereological principles delineate possibilities for parts and wholes, and putting powers at the centre of a discussion about parthood can furnish a novel conception of mereological laws, much as dispositionalism has done so for natural laws; namely, (...)
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  16. The Empty World as the Null Conjunction of States of Affairs.Rafael De Clercq - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:0-17.
    If possible worlds are conjunctions of states of affairs, as in David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory, then is the empty world to be thought of as the null conjunction of states of affairs? The proposal seems plausible, and has received support from David Efird, Tom Stoneham, and Armstrong himself. However, in this paper, it is argued that the proposal faces a trilemma: either it leads to the absurd conclusion that the actual world is empty; or it reduces to a familiar representation (...)
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  17. Fragments, plinths and shattered bricks: Deleuze and atomism.Yannis Chatzantonis - 2023 - la Deleuziana 1 (15):39-45.
    There are two links that stand in the foreground of Deleuze’s treatment of Epicurus and Lucretius: the themes of immanent naturalism and of the externality of ontological relations. However, the links are problematised in Difference and Repetition, which presents an important critique of the concept of the atom. I will argue that this critique reveals the limits of the intellectual affinity between ancient atomism and Deleuzian metaphysics; in particular, that Deleuze’s notions of relationality and spatium respond to problems raised by (...)
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  18. Intuitionistic Mereology II: Overlap and Disjointness.Paolo Maffezioli & Achille C. Varzi - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 52 (4):1197-1233.
    This paper extends the axiomatic treatment of intuitionistic mereology introduced in Maffezioli and Varzi (_Synthese, 198_(S18), 4277–4302 2021 ) by examining the behavior of constructive notions of overlap and disjointness. We consider both (i) various ways of defining such notions in terms of other intuitionistic mereological primitives, and (ii) the possibility of treating them as mereological primitives of their own.
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  19. Zur Philosophie und Psychlogie der Ganzheit.Felix Krueger - 1953 - Berlin,: Springer.
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  20. El todo y las partes.Florencio González Asenjo - 1962 - Madrid,: Editorial Martínez de urguía.
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  21. Problema t︠s︡elostnosti v filosofii i biologii.Viktor Grigoʹevich Afanasʹev - 1964
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  22. Dialektika chasti i t︠s︡elogo.G. A. I︠U︡gaĭ - 1965 - Alma-Ata: Nauka.
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  23. Edinichno i obshto.Ilii︠a︡ N. Tasev - 1966
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  24. Totalité et infini.Emmanuel Lévinas - 1971 - La Haye,: M. Nijhoff.
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  25. Struktur und Existenz.Herbert Christof Günzl - 1968 - (Linz,: Trauner in Kommission.
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  26. Appendix 3 and the Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness.Jacob Parr - manuscript
    The author , after Bergson , provides a formal deduction which defends Bergson ’s claim that “ the character of movements which are externally identical are internally different “ . The author is responding to Diana Coole and Samantha Frost ’s “ Introducing the New Materialisms ” , wherein neither Coole nor Frost showed a knowledge of Bergson or his existence whatsoever despite seemingly having to have read Deleuze and Deleuze ’s contemporaries … -/- The author also presents a novel (...)
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  27. Lewis on Mereology and Set Theory.John P. Burgess - 2015 - In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A Companion to David Lewis. Oxford, UK: Wiley. pp. 459–469.
    David Lewis in the short monograph Parts of Classes (PC) undertakes a fundamental re‐examination of the relationship between mereology, the general theory of parts, and set theory, the general theory of collections. Given Lewis's theses, to be an element of a set or member of class is just to have a singleton that is a part thereof. Lewis in PC adds a claim of kind of ontological innocence, comparable to that of first‐order logic, for mereology. The only substantive assumption of (...)
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  28. Spinoza's Mereology.Tad M. Schmaltz - 2021 - In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), A Companion to Spinoza. Chichester, UK: Wiley. pp. 135–143.
    Spinoza seems to argue both that “God or Nature” is mereologically simple, and that this being is mereologically complex insofar as it is composed of parts. This chapter proposes on Spinoza's behalf a resolution of this antinomy. This resolution focuses on Spinoza's mereology of the material world. It offers an alternative interpretation according to which Spinoza adheres both to the indivisibility of extended substance and to the reality of the finite modal parts that compose an infinite modal whole. In the (...)
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  29. Review of Cotnoir, A.J. and Varzi, A.C. Mereology[REVIEW]Daniel Nolan - 2023 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
    Review of Cotnoir and Varzi's _Mereology_.
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  30. Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers.Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.) - 2023 - Routledge.
    This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do--and what can happen to them--is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do (...)
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  31. Three Logico-Ontological Notions and Mereology.Uwe Meixner - 2013 - In Christer Svennerlind, Almäng Jan & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday. Ontos Verlag. pp. 439-447.
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  32. Vzaimoopredelennostʹ v bytii i poznanii.A. A. Tolkachev - 1985 - Minsk: "Nauka i tekhnika". Edited by L. V. Uvarov & A. K. Maneev.
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  33. Totalité et formalisme: esquisse d'une analyse morphomorphologique.Lokadi Longandjo - 1987 - Ottignies [Belgium]: Noraf.
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  34. Zheng ti di zhe xue: zu zhi di qi yuan, sheng zhang he yan hua.Guantao Jin - 1987 - Chengdu: Sichuan sheng xin hua shu dian fa xing.
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  35. Boolean Mereology.Xinhe Wu - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 52 (3):731-766.
    Most ordinary objects - cats, humans, mountains, ships, tables, etc. - have indeterminate mereological boundaries. If the theory of mereology is meant to include ordinary objects at all, we need it to have some space for mereological indeterminacy. In this paper, we present a novel degree-theoretic semantics - Boolean semantics - and argue that it is the best degree-theoretic semantics for modeling mereological indeterminacy, for three main reasons: (a) it allows for incomparable degrees of parthood, (b) it enforces classical logic, (...)
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  36. Problema t︠s︡elostnosti i sistemnyĭ podkhod.Igorʹ Viktorovich Blauberg - 1997 - Moskva: Editorial URSS.
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  37. Erkennendes Leben: ganzheitsphilosophische Gespräche.Woldemar Oskar Döring - 2000 - Münster: Lit.
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  38. Zong ti lun =.Xiangyang Gan - 2002 - Changsha Shi: Hunan ren min chu ban she.
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  39. When do parts form wholes? Integrated information as the restriction on mereological composition.Kelvin J. McQueen & Naotsugu Tsuchiya - forthcoming - Neuroscience of Consciousness.
    Under what conditions are material objects, such as particles, parts of a whole object? This is the composition question and is a longstanding open question in philosophy. Existing attempts to specify a non-trivial restriction on composition tend to be vague and face serious counterexamples. Consequently, two extreme answers have become mainstream: composition (the forming of a whole by its parts) happens under no or all conditions. In this paper, we provide a self-contained introduction to the integrated information theory of consciousness (...)
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  40. Filosofii︠a︡ totalʹnosti.I︠E︡vhen Akymovych - 2012 - Odesa: Pres-kur'i︠e︡r.
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  41. Mereologie. Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie und Erkenntnistheorie.Lothar Ridder - 2002 - Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann.
    Die Mereologie ist eine noch relativ junge philosophische Disziplin an der Grenze zwischen Logik und Philosophie. Sie untersucht in systematischer Weise auf der Grundlage geeigneter logischer Systeme die Beziehungen zwischen Teil (griech. "meros") und Ganzem. Von besonderem philosophischem Interesse ist die Frage, inwieweit sich mereologische Strukturen zur Klärung und Lösung verschiedenster Probleme vor allem der Ontologie und Erkenntnistheorie einsetzen lassen. Folgende Problemfelder sind dabei von Bedeutung: -/- (1) Was tragen mereologische Systeme zur Durchführung ontologischer Programme bei, die ohne die Annahme (...)
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  42. El ente compuesto.Salvador Daniel Escobedo Casillas - 2012 - In Teoría de los entes: Propuesta para la formalización de la filosofía Con una introducción a la lógica y a la semiótica. Guadalajara, Jal., México: Temacilli. pp. 364-387.
    Se presenta una teoría axiomática sobre entidades compuestas generales. Por entidad compuesta se hace referencia a cualquier ser hecho de partes. Usando esta formalización, es posible llegar a algunas conclusiones metafísicas valiosas, como la no equivalencia entre los conceptos de entidad compuesta y conjunto matemático. Asimismo, se analizan y desacreditan algunas formas de platonismo matemático. Se proponen algunos ejercicios para ayudar al lector a aprender la notación simbólica.
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  43. In defense of disjointism.Martin A. Lipman - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Disjointism is the view that co-located objects do not share any parts. A human-shaped statue is composed from a torso, head and limbs; the co-located lumpof clay is only composed from chunks of clay. This essay discusses the tenability of this relatively neglected view, focusing on two objections. The first objection is that disjointism implies co-located copies of microphysical particles. I argue that it doesn’t imply this and that there are more plausible disjointist views of tiny parts available. The second (...)
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  44. Not a Body: the Catalyst of St. Augustine’s Intellectual Conversion in the Books of the Platonists.Kyle S. Hodge - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 93 (1):51-72.
    In his Confessions, Augustine says that he achieved great intellectual insight from what he cryptically calls the “books of the Platonists.” Prior to reading these books, he was a corporealist and was unable to conceive of incorporeal beings. Because of the insurmountable philosophical problems corporealism caused for the Christian belief he was seeking, Augustine claims that this was the greatest intellectual barrier he faced in converting to Christianity. As such, the specific contents and effects of these Platonist books are of (...)
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  45. The 'Two Universes' Theory.Ilexa Yardley - 2022 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory/.
    The human lives in two universes. One inside. The other outside. One completely abstract. The other concrete. Telling all of us something important about Nature and ‘reality.’.
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  46. Parts of spacetime.Sam Baron - 2021 - American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (4):387-398.
    Consider the following pair of theses: all fundamental physical objects are spatiotemporal and all non-fundamental physical objects are ultimately composed of fundamental objects. Work on the physics of quantum gravity suggests that spacetime is a non-fundamental, emergent phenomenon and thus that thesis is false. The fundamentals are non-spatiotemporal in nature. This paper will argue against on the grounds that non-fundamental spatiotemporal objects cannot be composed of fundamental non-spatiotemporal objects. So, assuming that spacetime is emergent, new metaphysical resources are needed to (...)
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  47. Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology by Ross D. Inman.Paolo C. Biondi - 2020 - Review of Metaphysics 74 (2):387-389.
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  48. Zasada trójzgodności: analiza kontekstowa treści pojęcia jedność.Danuta Ługowska - 2013 - Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego.
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  49. Levinas' 'Totality and infinity'.William Large - 2015 - London: Bloomsbury Academic.
    Overview of themes and context -- Reading the text -- Reception and influence -- Further reading.
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  50. Diversity and unity.George F. McLean (ed.) - 2015 - Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.
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