14 ideas
| 10653 | Maybe set theory need not be well-founded [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: There are some proposals for non-well-founded set theory (tolerating cases of self-membership and membership circularities). | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Aczel 1988, and Barwise and Moss 1996] |
| 10648 | Mereology need not be nominalist, though it is often taken to be so [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: While mereology was originally offered with a nominalist viewpoint, resulting in a conception of mereology as an ontologically parsimonious alternative to set theory, there is no necessary link between analysis of parthood and nominalism. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lesniewski and Leonard-and-Goodman. Do you allow something called a 'whole' into your ontology, as well as the parts? He observes that while 'wholes' can be concrete, they can also be abstract, if the parts are abstract. |
| 10655 | Are there mereological atoms, and are all objects made of them? [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: It is an open question whether there are any mereological atoms (with no proper parts), and also whether every object is ultimately made up of atoms. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 3) | |
| A reaction: Such a view would have to presuppose (metaphysically) that the divisibility of matter has limits. If one follows this route, then are there only 'natural' wholes, or are we 'unrestricted' in our view of how the atoms combine? I favour the natural route. |
| 10659 | There is something of which everything is part, but no null-thing which is part of everything [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: It is common in mereology to hold that there is something of which everything is part, but few hold that there is a 'null entity' that is part of everything. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This comes out as roughly the opposite of set theory, which cannot do without the null set, but is not keen on the set of everything. |
| 10661 | 'Composition is identity' says multitudes are the reality, loosely composing single things [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: The thesis known as 'composition is identity' is that identity is mereological composition; a fusion is just the parts counted loosely, but it is strictly a multitude and loosely a single thing. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites D.Baxter 1988, in Mind] It is not clear, from this simple statement, what the difference is between multitudes that are parts of a thing, and multitudes that are not. A heavy weight seems to hang on the notion of 'composed of'. |
| 10647 | Parts may or may not be attached, demarcated, arbitrary, material, extended, spatial or temporal [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: The word 'part' can used whether it is attached, or arbitrarily demarcated, or gerrymandered, or immaterial, or unextended, or spatial, or temporal. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 1) |
| 10651 | If 'part' is reflexive, then identity is a limit case of parthood [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: Taking reflexivity as constitutive of the meaning of 'part' amounts to regarding identity as a limit case of parthood. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice thought, but it is horribly 'philosophical', and a long way from ordinary usage and common sense (which is, I'm sorry to say, a BAD thing). |
| 10649 | 'Part' stands for a reflexive, antisymmetric and transitive relation [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: It seems obvious that 'part' stands for a partial ordering, a reflexive ('everything is part of itself'), antisymmetic ('two things cannot be part of each other'), and transitive (a part of a part of a thing is part of that thing) relation. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm never clear why the reflexive bit of the relation should be taken as 'obvious', since it seems to defy normal usage and common sense. It would be absurd to say 'I'll give you part of the cake' and hand you the whole of it. See Idea 10651. |
| 10654 | The parthood relation will help to define at least seven basic predicates [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: With a basic parthood relation, we can formally define various mereological predicates, such as overlap, underlap, proper part, over-crossing, under-crossing, proper overlap, and proper underlap. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [Varzi offers some diagrams, but they need interpretation] |
| 10658 | Sameness of parts won't guarantee identity if their arrangement matters [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: We might say that sameness of parts is not sufficient for identity, as some entities may differ exclusively with respect to the arrangement of the parts, as when we compare 'John loves Mary' with 'Mary loves John'. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably wide dispersal should also prevent parts from fixing wholes, but there is so much vagueness here that it is tempting to go for unrestricted composition, and then work back to the common sense position. |
| 10652 | Conceivability may indicate possibility, but literary fantasy does not [Varzi] |
| Full Idea: Conceivability may well be a guide to possibility, but literary fantasy is by itself no evidence of conceivability. | |
| From: Achille Varzi (Mereology [2003], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Very nice. People who cite 'conceivability' in this context often have a disgracefully loose usage for the word. Really, really conceivable is probably our only guide to possibility. |
| 14644 | If my conception of pain derives from me, it is a contradiction to speak of another's pain [Malcolm] |
| Full Idea: If I obtain my conception of pain from pain that I experience, then it will be a part of my conception of pain that I am the only being that can experience it. For me it will be contradiction to speak of another's pain. | |
| From: Norman Malcolm (Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' [1954]), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - De Re and De Dicto p.44 | |
| A reaction: This obviously has the private language argument in the background. It seems to point towards a behaviourist view, that I derive pain from external behaviour in the first instance. So how do I connect the behaviour to the feeling? |
| 1422 | God's existence is either necessary or impossible, and no one has shown that the concept of God is contradictory [Malcolm] |
| Full Idea: God's existence is either impossible or necessary. It can be the former only if the concept of such a being is self-contradictory or in some way logically absurd. Assuming that this is not so, it follows that He necessarily exists. | |
| From: Norman Malcolm (Anselm's Argument [1959], §2) | |
| A reaction: The concept of God suggests paradoxes of omniscience, omnipotence and free will, so self-contradiction seems possible. How should we respond if the argument suggests God is necessary, but evidence suggests God is highly unlikely? |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |