more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 10707

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

Full Idea

Mereology tends to elide the distinction between the cards in a pack and the suits.

Gist of Idea

Mereology elides the distinction between the cards in a pack and the suits

Source

Michael Potter (Set Theory and Its Philosophy [2004], 02.1)

Book Ref

Potter,Michael: 'Set Theory and Its Philosophy' [OUP 2004], p.23

A Reaction

The example is a favourite of Frege's. Potter is giving a reason why mathematicians opted for set theory. I'm not clear, though, why a pack cannot have either 4 parts or 52 parts. Parts can 'fall under a concept' (such as 'legs'). I'm puzzled.

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]