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Single Idea 10662

[filed under theme 4. Formal Logic / G. Formal Mereology / 1. Mereology ]

Full Idea

Van Ingwagen writes of 'mereological nihilism' (that only mereological atoms exist) and of 'mereological universalism' (adhering to the principle of Unrestricted Composition).

Gist of Idea

Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole')

Source

report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], p.72-) by Achille Varzi - Mereology 4.3

Book Ref

'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.18

A Reaction

They both look mereologically nihilistic to me, in comparison with an account that builds on 'natural' wholes and their parts. You can only be 'unrestricted' if you view the 'wholes' in your vast ontology as pretty meaningless (as Lewis does, Idea 10660).

Related Idea

Idea 10660 A commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment; it is them and they are it [Lewis]

The 23 ideas with the same theme [formalised general theory of how parts relate to wholes]:

15845 It seems absurd that seeing a person's limbs, the one is many, and yet the many are one [Plato]
13270 Are a part and whole one or many? Either way, what is the cause? [Aristotle]
13282 Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
10397 Abelard's mereology involves privileged and natural divisions, and principal parts [Abelard, by King,P]
10706 Dedekind originally thought more in terms of mereology than of sets [Dedekind, by Potter]
14121 The part-whole relation is ultimate and indefinable [Russell]
10657 The counties of Utah, and the state, and its acres, are in no way different [Goodman]
10806 Megethology is the result of adding plural quantification to mereology [Lewis]
10662 Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole') [Inwagen, by Varzi]
13331 Part and whole contribute asymmetrically to one another, so must differ [Fine,K]
9928 Mereology implies that acceptance of entities entails acceptance of conglomerates [Burgess/Rosen]
15004 'Gunk' is an object in which proper parts all endlessly have further proper parts [Sider]
15841 Mereology began as a nominalist revolt against the commitments of set theory [Harte,V]
8465 Mereology has been exploited by some nominalists to achieve the effects of set theory [Orenstein]
10648 Mereology need not be nominalist, though it is often taken to be so [Varzi]
10655 Are there mereological atoms, and are all objects made of them? [Varzi]
10659 There is something of which everything is part, but no null-thing which is part of everything [Varzi]
12819 A 'part' has different meanings for individuals, classes, and masses [Simons]
12815 Classical mereology doesn't apply well to the objects around us [Simons]
12832 Complement: the rest of the Universe apart from some individual, written x-bar [Simons]
12834 Criticisms of mereology: parts? transitivity? sums? identity? four-dimensional? [Simons]
10707 Mereology elides the distinction between the cards in a pack and the suits [Potter]
13258 The 'aggregative' objections says mereology gets existence and location of objects wrong [Koslicki]