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Full Idea
Most relations obtain only between certain kinds of thing. To learn that x is a part of y, however, tells you nothing about x and y taken individually.
Gist of Idea
Parthood lacks the restriction of kind which most relations have
Source
Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 03.2)
Book Ref
Yablo,Stephen: 'Aboutness' [Princeton 2014], p.46
A Reaction
Too sweeping. To be a part of crowd you have to be a person. To be part of the sea you have to be wet. It might depend on whether composition is unrestricted.
Related Idea
Idea 12795 Parts must be of the same very general type as the wholes [Laycock]
| 18993 | If sentences point to different evidence, they must have different subject-matter [Yablo] |
| 18992 | Sentence-meaning is the truth-conditions - plus factors responsible for them [Yablo] |
| 18994 | The content of an assertion can be quite different from compositional content [Yablo] |
| 18996 | A statement S is 'partly true' if it has some wholly true parts [Yablo] |
| 18997 | Truth-conditions as subject-matter has problems of relevance, short cut, and reversal [Yablo] |
| 18999 | y is only a proper part of x if there is a z which 'makes up the difference' between them [Yablo] |
| 18998 | Parthood lacks the restriction of kind which most relations have [Yablo] |
| 19001 | 'Pegasus doesn't exist' is false without Pegasus, yet the absence of Pegasus is its truthmaker [Yablo] |
| 19002 | A nominalist can assert statements about mathematical objects, as being partly true [Yablo] |
| 19003 | Most people say nonblack nonravens do confirm 'all ravens are black', but only a tiny bit [Yablo] |
| 19004 | Gettier says you don't know if you are confused about how it is true [Yablo] |
| 19005 | Not-A is too strong to just erase an improper assertion, because it actually reverses A [Yablo] |
| 19006 | An 'enthymeme' is an argument with an indispensable unstated assumption [Yablo] |
| 19007 | A theory need not be true to be good; it should just be true about its physical aspects [Yablo] |