Abstract

Part One of my dissertation is about composite objects: things with proper parts, like plates, planets, plants and people. I begin chapter 1 by pointing out that if one were to judge by the way we normally speak about composite objects, one would suppose that we were all completely certain of a theory I call folk mereology. For instance, we seem to be completely convinced that whenever some things are piled up, there is an object---a pile---which they compose. I point out that folk mereology is neither an analytic truth nor a theory for which we have conclusive empirical evidence. So what are we to make of the feeling that it makes no sense to deny folk mereology? What this shows, I claim, is that the standard which an assertion about composite objects has to meet in order to be correct is not strict and literal truth, but something less demanding. ;In the last part of chapter 1 and in chapter 2, I argue that we have no evidence for the existence of composite objects, and that without such evidence we ought to believe that there aren't any composite objects. Chapter 3 is devoted to working out some details of a broadly "fictionalist" explanation of the fact that claims about composite objects can be correct without being strictly and literally true. ;In Part Two I defend a parallel view about complex attributes---properties, relations and propositions. In our ordinary talk about attributes, we seem to presuppose a theory according to which there are very many of these entities; but, as I argue in chapter 4, we cannot justifiably be certain that this theory is true. I conclude that in this case too, correct assertion diverges from strict and literal truth. Chapter 5 is devoted to an argument that there are in fact no complex attributes. Finally, in chapter 6, I develop a fictionalist account of the conditions under which ordinary assertions about attributes are correct