Restricted Composition is Information Compression

Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):677-700 (2023)
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Abstract

This paper proposes and examines an answer to the special composition question—complex objects compress information about their parts. I start by defending fastenation for material objects and then extract from fastenation the idea that the conjoinment of parts establishes correlations among the locations and motions of those parts. I move from this to the proposal that entities are parts of some object when that object allows for the efficient, if lossy, compression of information about those parts.

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Alexander James Bird
Cambridge University

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References found in this work

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Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Philosophy of Science 42 (3):341-344.

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