Against Parthood

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 8:237–293 (2013)
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Abstract

Mereological nihilism says that there do not exist (in the fundamental sense) any objects with proper parts. A reason to accept it is that we can thereby eliminate 'part' from fundamental ideology. Many purported reasons to reject it - based on common sense, perception, and the possibility of gunk, for example - are weak. A more powerful reason is that composite objects seem needed for spacetime physics; but sets suffice instead.

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Theodore Sider
Rutgers - New Brunswick

Citations of this work

Against Grounding Necessitarianism.Alexander Skiles - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (4):717-751.
Debunking arguments.Daniel Z. Korman - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (12):e12638.
Grounding and metametaphysics.Alexander Skiles & Kelly Trogdon - 2020 - In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York, NY: Routledge.
Mereology.Achille C. Varzi - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

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Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
On what grounds what.Jonathan Schaffer - 2009 - In Ryan Wasserman, David Manley & David Chalmers (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 347-383.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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