Results for 'Mereology'

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Bibliography: Mereology in Metaphysics
Bibliography: Mereology, Misc in Metaphysics
  1. Using mereological principles to support metaphysics.Maureen Donnelly - 2011 - Philosophical Quarterly 61 (243):225-246.
    Mereological principles are sometimes used to support general claims about the structure and arrangement of objects in the world. I focus initially on one such mereological principle, the weak supplementation principle (WSP). It is not obvious that (WSP) is prescribed by ordinary thinking about parthood. Further, (WSP) is not needed for a fairly strong formal characterization of the part–whole relation. For these reasons, some arguments relying on (WSP) might be countered by simply denying (WSP). I argue more generally that there (...)
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  2.  63
    Mereological Destruction and Relativized Parthood: A Reply to Costa and Calosi.Jonathan D. Payton - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (4):1797-1806.
    Metaphysicians of various stripes claim that a single object can have more than one exact location in space or time – e.g. endurantists claim that an object persists by being ‘all there’ at different moments in time. Antony Eagle has developed a formal theory of location which is prima facie consistent with multi-location, but Damiano Costa and Claudio Calosi argue that the theory is unattractive to multi-location theorists on other grounds. I examine their charge that Eagle’s theory won’t allow an (...)
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  3.  50
    Mereological Bimodal Logics.Li Dazhu & Yanjing Wang - 2022 - Review of Symbolic Logic 15 (4):823-858.
    In this paper, using a propositional modal language extended with the window modality, we capture the first-order properties of various mereological theories. In this setting,$\Box \varphi $readsall the parts(of the current object)are$\varphi $, interpreted on the models with awhole-partbinary relation under various constraints. We show that all the usual mereological theories can be captured by modal formulas in our language via frame correspondence. We also correct a mistake in the existing completeness proof for a basic system of mereology by (...)
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  4. Folk Mereology is Teleological.David Rose & Jonathan Schaffer - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):238-270.
    When do the folk think that mereological composition occurs? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view of composition that fits with folk intuitions, and yet there has been little agreement about what the folk intuit. We aim to put the tools of experimental philosophy to constructive use. Our studies suggest that folk mereology is teleological: people tend to intuit that composition occurs when the result serves a purpose. We thus conclude that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions, as tied into a (...)
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  5. The mereology of structural universals.Peter Forrest - 2016 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 25 (3):259-283.
    This paper explores the mereology of structural universals, using the structural richness of a non-classical mereology without unique fusions. The paper focuses on a problem posed by David Lewis, who using the example of methane, and assuming classical mereology, argues against any purely mereological theory of structural universals. The problem is that being a methane molecule would have to contain being a hydrogen atom four times over, but mereology does not have the concept of the same (...)
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  6. Mereological vagueness and existential vagueness.Maureen Donnelly - 2009 - Synthese 168 (1):53 - 79.
    It is often assumed that indeterminacy in mereological relations—in particular, indeterminacy in which collections of objects have fusions—leads immediately to indeterminacy in what objects there are in the world. This assumption is generally taken as a reason for rejecting mereological vagueness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between mereological vagueness and existential vagueness. I hope to show that the connection between the two forms of vagueness is not nearly so clear-cut as has been supposed.
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  7. Mereological nihilism and the special arrangement question.Andrew Brenner - 2015 - Synthese 192 (5):1295-1314.
    Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects—objects with proper parts—do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “xs arranged F-wise” . Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insofar as nihilists are either unable to say what they mean by such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” or that nihilists are unable to employ such phrases without incurring significant costs, perhaps even undermining one of the chief motivations for (...)
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  8. Mereology.Achille C. Varzi & A. J. Cotnoir - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Is a whole something more than the sum of its parts? Are there things composed of the same parts? If you divide an object into parts, and divide those parts into smaller parts, will this process ever come to an end? Can something lose parts or gain new ones without ceasing to be the thing it is? Does any multitude of things (including disparate things such as you, this book, and the tail of a cat) compose a whole of some (...)
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  9. Mereological bundle theory and the identity of indiscernibles.Anthony Shiver - 2014 - Synthese 191 (5):1-13.
    Paul (Noûs 36:578–596, 2002; Noûs 40:623–659, 2006, The Handbook of Mereology, forthcoming) has argued for a bundle theory of objects that analyzes the bundling relation between properties and objects in terms of parthood relations. In this paper I argue that any mereological bundle theory with the explanatory power of Paul’s theory will entail the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII). This is problematic, since similar bundle theories seem to fall to Max Black’s two sphere counterexample to (PII). I (...)
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  10. Mereology.Paul R. Daniels - 2016 - Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy.
    This peer reviewed reference article is an annotated online bibliography on mereology with 80+ entries. It's aim is to provide a selective and balanced guide to the subject. It contains thematic headings with commentaries. The reader should come away cognizant of what the most influential work in mereology are. Topics highlighted herein include, but are not limited to: the history of mereology, classical extensional mereology and its challenges, parthood, connections with location relations, mereological simples and gunk, (...)
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  11. Mereological Nihilism and Puzzles about Material Objects.Bradley Rettler - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):842-868.
    Mereological nihilism is the view that no objects have proper parts. Despite how counter‐intuitive it is, it is taken quite seriously, largely because it solves a number of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects – or so its proponents claim. In this article, I show that for every puzzle that mereological nihilism solves, there is a similar puzzle that (a) it doesn’t solve, and (b) every other solution to the original puzzle does solve. Since the solutions to the new (...)
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  12. What Is Classical Mereology?Paul Hovda - 2009 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 38 (1):55 - 82.
    Classical mereology is a formal theory of the part-whole relation, essentially involving a notion of mereological fusion, or sum. There are various different definitions of fusion in the literature, and various axiomatizations for classical mereology. Though the equivalence of the definitions of fusion is provable from axiom sets, the definitions are not logically equivalent, and, hence, are not inter-changeable when laying down the axioms. We examine the relations between the main definitions of fusion and correct some technical errors (...)
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  13.  18
    The mereological theory of odors.Roberto Casati & François Le Corre - unknown
    We propose the mereological theory of odors, according to which odors are proper parts of concrete objects. We distinguish between object solid core and gaseous periphery; the odor is the periphery and plays a role in olfactory perception similar to the role played by surfaces in visual and tactile perception. Some epistemological and metaphysical consequences of the theory are explored, in particular the fact that objects are larger than they visually appear, and that smell turns out to be more accurate (...)
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  14.  60
    Soteriological Mereology in the Pāli Discourses, Buddhaghosa, and Huayan Buddhism.Nicholaos Jones - 2023 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 22 (1):117-143.
    Extant discussions of Buddhist mereology give minimal attention to the soteriological significance of denying the reality of wholes. This is unfortunate, because the connection between mereology and soteriological is both significant and problematic. The connection is significant, because it supports an argument for the unreality of composite wholes that does not depend upon any claim about the nature of wholes. The connection is also problematic, because some Buddhists endorse the soteriological relevance of mereology despite admitting that composite (...)
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  15. Quine, mereology, and inference to the best explanation.John Bigelow - 2010 - Logique Et Analyse 53 (212):465.
    Given Quine's views on philosophical methodology, he should not have taken the axioms of classical mereology to be "self-evident", or "analytic"; but rather, he should have set out to justify them by what might be broadly called an "inference to the best explanation". He does very little to this end. In particular, he does little to examine alternative theories, to see if there might be anything they could explain better than classical mereology can. I argue that there is (...)
     
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  16. A Mereological Construal of the Primary Notions Being and Thing in Avicenna and Aquinas.Daniel D. De Haan - 2014 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2):335-360.
    This study has two goals: first, to show that Avicenna’s account of being and thing significantly influenced Aquinas’s doctrine of the primary notions; second, to establish the value of adopting a mereological construal of these primary notions in the metaphysics of Avicenna and Aquinas. I begin with an explication of the mereological construal of the primary notions that casts these notions in terms of wholes and parts. Being and thing refer to the same entitative whole and have the same extension, (...)
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  17. Mereological monism and Humean supervenience.Andrea Borghini & Giorgio Lando - 2016 - Synthese 197 (11):4745-4765.
    According to Lewis, mereology is the general and exhaustive theory of ontological composition, and every contingent feature of the world supervenes upon some fundamental properties instantiated by minimal entities. A profound analogy can be drawn between these two basic contentions of his metaphysics, namely that both can be intended as a denial of emergentism. In this essay, we study the relationships between Humean supervenience and two philosophical spin-offs of mereological monism: the possibility of gunk and the thesis of composition (...)
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  18. The Mereological Basis of Truthmaker Semantics.Daniele Porello & Giovanni Gonella - forthcoming - Topoi:1-18.
    This articles explores the mereological foundation of truthmaker semantics. Building upon Kit Fine’s abstract theory of part in [16], we engage in an exploration of the mereological assumptions that determine the construction of truthmaker semantics. Our approach yields semantics for a diverse range of logics, including substructural logics such as the associative Lambek calculus, as well as the logics of analytic containment. Furthermore, we elucidate the philosophical implications that arise from this pioneering approach.
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  19. Mereological Nihilism and the Problem of Emergence.David Michael Cornell - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (1):77-87.
    Mereological nihilism is the view that there are no composite objects; everything in existence is mereologically simple. The view is subject to a number of difficulties, one of which concerns what I call the problem of emergence. Very briefly, the problem is that nihilism seems to be incompatible with emergent properties; it seems to rule out their very possibility. This is a problem because there are good independent reasons to believe that emergent properties are possible. This paper provides a solution (...)
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  20. Mereological Nihilism and Theoretical Unification.Andrew Brenner - 2015 - Analytic Philosophy 56 (4):318-337.
    Mereological nihilism (henceforth just "nihilism") is the thesis that composition never occurs. Nihilism has often been defended on the basis of its theoretical simplicity, including its ontological simplicity and its ideological simplicity (roughly, nihilism's ability to do without primitive mereological predicates). In this paper I defend nihilism on the basis of the theoretical unification conferred by nihilism, which is, roughly, nihilism's capacity to allow us to take fewer phenomena as brute and inexplicable. This represents a respect in which nihilism enjoys (...)
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  21. Intuitionistic mereology.Paolo Maffezioli & Achille C. Varzi - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 18):4277-4302.
    Two mereological theories are presented based on a primitive apartness relation along with binary relations of mereological excess and weak excess, respectively. It is shown that both theories are acceptable from the standpoint of constructive reasoning while remaining faithful to the spirit of classical mereology. The two theories are then compared and assessed with regard to their extensional import.
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  22. Mereologies as the grammars of chemical discourses.Rom Harré & Jean-Pierre Llored - 2011 - Foundations of Chemistry 13 (1):63-76.
    Mereology is the logic of part—whole concepts as they are used in many different contexts. The old chemical metaphysics of atoms and molecules seems to fit classical mereology very well. However, when functional attributes are added to part specifications and quantum mechanical considerations are also added, the rules of classical mereology are breached in chemical discourses. A set theoretical alternative mereology is also found wanting. Molecular orbital theory requires a metaphysics of affordances that also stands outside (...)
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  23.  88
    An Applied Mereology of the City: Unifying Science and Philosophy for Urban Planning.Shane Epting - 2016 - Science and Engineering Ethics 22 (5):1361-1374.
    Based on their research showing that growing cities follow basic principles, two theoretical physicists, Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West, call for researchers and professionals to contribute to a grand theory of urban sustainability. In their research, they develop a ‘science of the city’ to help urban planners address problems that arise from population increases. Although they provide valuable insights for understanding urban sustainability issues, they do not give planners a manageable way to approach such problems. I argue that developing an (...)
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  24.  4
    Quantum Mereology and Subsystems from the Spectrum.Nicolas Loizeau & Dries Sels - 2024 - Foundations of Physics 55 (1):1-14.
    The minimal ingredients to describe a quantum system are a Hamiltonian, an initial state, and a preferred tensor product structure that encodes a decomposition into subsystems. We explore a top-down approach in which the subsystems emerge from the spectrum of the whole system. This approach has been referred to as quantum mereology. First we show that decomposing a system into subsystems is equivalent to decomposing a spectrum into other spectra. Then we argue that the number of subsystems (the volume (...)
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  25.  34
    (1 other version)Mereological Singularism and Paradox.Eric Snyder & Stewart Shapiro - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):1-20.
    The primary argument against mereological singularism—the view that definite plural noun phrases like ‘the students’ refer to “set-like entities”—is that it is ultimately incoherent. The most forceful form of this charge is due to Barry Schein, who argues that singularists must accept a certain comprehension principle which entails the existence of things having the contradictory property of being both atomic and non-atomic. The purpose of this paper is to defuse Schein’s argument, by noting three necessary and independently motivated restrictions on (...)
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  26. Mereology and modality.Gabriel Uzquiano - 2014 - In Shieva Kleinschmidt (ed.), Mereology and Location. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 33-56.
    Do mereological fusions have their parts necessarily? None of the axioms of non-modal formulations of classical mereology appear to speak directly to this question. And yet a great many philosophers who take the part-whole relation to be governed by classical mereology seem to assume that they do. In addition to this, many philosophers who make allowance for the part-whole relation to obtain merely contingently between a part and a mereological fusion tend to depart from non-modal formulations of classical (...)
     
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  27. Nonclassical Mereology and Its Application to Sets.Peter Forrest - 2002 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 43 (2):79-94.
    Part One of this paper is a case against classical mereology and for Heyting mereology. This case proceeds by first undermining the appeal of classical mereology and then showing how it fails to cohere with our intuitions about a measure of quantity. Part Two shows how Heyting mereology provides an account of sets and classes without resort to any nonmereological primitive.
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  28.  69
    Mereology on Topological and Convergence Spaces.Daniel R. Patten - 2013 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 54 (1):21-31.
    We show that a standard axiomatization of mereology is equivalent to the condition that a topological space is discrete, and consequently, any model of general extensional mereology is indistinguishable from a model of set theory. We generalize these results to the Cartesian closed category of convergence spaces.
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  29. Mereology and ideology.Andrew Brenner - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7431-7448.
    Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Sider has defended nihilism on the basis of its relative ideological simplicity. In this paper I develop the argument from ideological simplicity, and defend it from some recent objections. Along the way I discuss the best way to formulate nihilism, what it means for a theory to exhibit lesser or greater degrees of ideological simplicity, the relationship between the parthood relation and the identity relation, and the notion that we should judge (...)
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  30. Mereological essentialism, composition, and stuff: a reply to Kristie Miller.David Nicolas - 2009 - Erkenntnis 71 (3):425-429.
    In ‘Essential stuff' (2008) and ‘Stuff' (2009), Kristie Miller argues that two generally accepted theses, often formulated as follows, are incompatible: - (Temporal) mereological essentialism for stuff (or matter), the thesis that any portion of stuff has the same parts at every time it exists. - Stuff composition, the thesis that for any two portions of stuff, there exists a portion of stuff that is their mereological sum (or fusion). She does this by considering competing hypotheses about stuff, trying to (...)
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  31.  76
    Mereology then and now.Rafał Gruszczyński & Achille C. Varzi - 2015 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 24 (4):409–427.
    This paper offers a critical reconstruction of the motivations that led to the development of mereology as we know it today, along with a brief description of some problems that define current research in the field.
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  32. Mereological Nihilism and Material Constitution.Simon Thunder - 2024 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 105 (4):448-467.
    Mereological nihilists typically employ a paraphrase strategy in order to mitigate the apparent absurdity of their denial of the existence of composite objects. I argue here that the nihilist's paraphrase strategy is incomplete, because no schema for generating nihilistically acceptable paraphrases of sentences concerning material constitution has ever been given. Nor can an adequate schema be arrived at by generalising things that nihilists have already said. I fill this lacuna in the nihilist's account by developing and defending a novel paraphrase (...)
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  33.  54
    Analytic Rules for Mereology.Paolo Maffezioli - 2016 - Studia Logica 104 (1):79-114.
    We present a sequent calculus for extensional mereology. It extends the classical first-order sequent calculus with identity by rules of inference corresponding to well-known mereological axioms. Structural rules, including cut, are admissible.
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  34. Against mereological nihilism.Jonathan Tallant - 2014 - Synthese 191 (7):1511-1527.
    I argue that mereological nihilism fails because it cannot answer the special arrangement question: when is it true that the xs are arranged F-wise? I suggest that the answers given in the literature fail and that the obvious responses that could be made look to undermine the motivations for adopting nihilism in the first place.
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  35. Can mereological sums serve as the semantic values of plurals?David Nicolas - 2007
    Abstract: Friends of plural logic—like Oliver & Smiley (2001), Rayo (2002), Yi (2005), and McKay (2006)—have argued that a semantics of plurals based on mereological sums would be too weak, and they have adduced several examples in favor of their claim. However, they have not considered various possible counter-arguments. So how convincing are their own arguments? We show that several of them are easily answered, while some others are more problematic. Overall, the case against mereological singularism—the idea that mereological sums (...)
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  36.  22
    Mereological endurantism and being a whole at a time: reply to Costa.Roberto Loss - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (9):2874-2883.
    Damiano Costa has recently offered a novel mereological definition of endurantism based on the idea that for an object to be wholly present at a time is for it to be a whole at that time. In this paper, I argue that Costa’s is not a definition of endurantism, since the idea that every object is a whole at every time it exists can be accepted by endurantists and perdurantists alike.
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  37. In defense of mereological universalism.Michael C. Rea - 1998 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (2):347-360.
    This paper defends Mereological Universalism(the thesis that, for any set S of disjoint objects, there is an object that the members of S compose. Universalism is unpalatable to many philosophers because it entails that if there are such things as my left tennis shoe, W. V. Quine, and the Taj Mahal, then there is another object that those three things compose. This paper presents and criticizes Peter van Inwagen's argument against Universalism and then presents a new argument in favor of (...)
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  38.  45
    Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction.Giorgio Lando - 2017 - London, UK: Bloomsbury.
    Parthood and composition are everywhere. The leg of a table is part of the table, the word "Christmas" is part of the sentence "I wish you a merry Christmas", the 13th century is part of the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg compose Benelux, the body of a deer is composed of a huge number of cells, the Middle Ages are composed of the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages. Is there really a general theory (...)
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  39.  34
    Sequents for non-wellfounded mereology.Paolo Maffezioli - 2016 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 25 (3):351-369.
    The paper explores the proof theory of non-wellfounded mereology with binary fusions and provides a cut-free sequent calculus equivalent to the standard axiomatic system.
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  40. On Mereology and Metricality.Zee R. Perry - 2024 - 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 (...)
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  41.  31
    Mereology.Giorgio Lando - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):855-858.
    The blurb on the back cover claims that in this book, it is possible to find all the tools needed to ‘theorize about all things mereological’. The book fulfills.
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  42. (2 other versions)Mereological Harmony.Gabriel Uzquiano - 2008 - In Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    This paper takes a close look at the thought that mereological relations on material objects mirror, and are mirrored by, parallel mereological relations on their exact locations. This hypothesis is made more precise by means of a battery of principles from which more substantive consequences are derived. Mereological harmony turns out to entail, for example, that atomistic space is an inhospitable environment for material gunk or that Whiteheadian space is not a hospitable environment for unextended material atoms.
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  43. Mereology, modality and magic.Katherine Hawley - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):117 – 133.
    If the property _being a methane molecule_ is a universal, then it is a structural universal: objects instantiate _being a methane molecule_ just in case they have the right sorts of proper parts arranged in the right sort of way. Lewis argued that there can be no satisfactory account of structural universals; in this paper I provide a satisfactory account.
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  44.  88
    Is Mereology a Guide to Conceivability?Daniel Giberman - 2015 - Mind 124 (493):121-146.
    Zombies are unconscious objects with conscious physical micro-duplicates. If zombies are possible then physicalism is false. It has been argued that zombies are possible if conceivable for an agent with ideal rationality. At any rate, they are possible only if so conceivable. This essay uses a mereological constraint to highlight the fine-grained differences between actually conscious physical objects and certain of their actually consciousness-incapable proper parts. These mereological considerations form the basis of an argument by dilemma that zombies are inconceivable. (...)
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  45. Mereological nihilism: quantum atomism and the impossibility of material constitution.Jeffrey Grupp - 2006 - Axiomathes 16 (3):245-386.
    Mereological nihilism is the philosophical position that there are no items that have parts. If there are no items with parts then the only items that exist are partless fundamental particles, such as the true atoms (also called philosophical atoms) theorized to exist by some ancient philosophers, some contemporary physicists, and some contemporary philosophers. With several novel arguments I show that mereological nihilism is the correct theory of reality. I will also discuss strong similarities that mereological nihilism has with empirical (...)
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  46. Mereological Nihilism and Personal Ontology.Andrew Brenner - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (268).
    Mereological nihilists hold that composition never occurs, so that nothing is ever a proper part of anything else. Substance dualists generally hold that we are each identical with an immaterial soul. In this paper, I argue that every popular objection to substance dualism has a parallel objection to composition. This thesis has some interesting implications. First, many of those who reject composition, but accept substance dualism, or who reject substance dualism and accept composition, have some explaining to do. Secondly, one (...)
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  47. The Mereological Problem of Entanglement.Paul M. Näger - manuscript
    It is well-known that the entangled quantum state of a composite object cannot be reduced to the states of its parts. This quantum holism provides a peculiar challenge to formulate an appropriate mereological model: When a system is in an entangled state, which objects are there on the micro and macro level, and which of the objects carries which properties? This paper chooses a modeling approach to answer these questions: It proceeds from a systematic overview of consistent mereological models for (...)
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  48.  98
    Medieval mereology.Desmond Paul Henry - 1991 - Philadelphia: B.R. Grüner.
    0. Introduction: Mereology, Metaphysics, and Speculative Grammar 0.1 Mereology, Ancient and Contemporary 0.11 Mereology is, strictly speaking, the theory of ...
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  49. Tensed Mereology.Paul Hovda - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 42 (2):241-283.
    Classical mereology (CM) is usually taken to be formulated in a tenseless language, and is therefore associated with a four-dimensionalist metaphysics. This paper presents three ways one might integrate the core idea of flat plenitude, i.e., that every suitable condition or property has exactly one mereological fusion, with a tensed logical setting. All require a revised notion of mereological fusion. The candidates differ over how they conceive parthood to interact with existence in time, which connects to the distinction between (...)
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  50.  67
    Handbook of Mereology.Stamatios Gerogiorgakis, Johanna Seibt & Guido Imaguire (eds.) - 2007 - Munich: Philosophia.
    The present volume is the first comprehensive reference work for research on part-whole relations. The Handbook of Mereology offers a wide scope, inclusive presentation of contemporary research on part-whole relations that draws out systematic, historical, and interdisciplinary trajectories, shows the subject’s fertility, and inspires future explorations. In particular, we want to impress that mereology is much more than the study of axiomatised systems. The relationship between part and whole is a basic schema of cognitive organisation that operates not (...)
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