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Full Idea
The fallacy of composition makes the erroneous assumption that every property of the things that constitute a thing is a property of the thing as well. But every large object is constituted by small parts, and every red object by colourless parts.
Gist of Idea
Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts
Source
Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.5)
Book Ref
Macdonald,Cynthia: 'Varieties of Things' [Blackwell 2005], p.85
A Reaction
There are nice questions here like 'If you add lots of smallness together, why don't you get extreme smallness?' Colours always make bad examples in such cases (see Idea 5456). Distinctions are needed here (e.g. Idea 7007).
Related Idea
Idea 7007 I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil]
| 22571 | 'If each is small, so too are all' is in one way false, for the whole composed of all is not small [Aristotle] |
| 2653 | If the parts of the universe are subject to the law of nature, the whole universe must also be subject to it [Cicero] |
| 6219 | The fallacy of composition is the assumption that what is true of the parts is true of the whole [Mautner] |
| 7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
| 11089 | Formally, composition and division fallacies occur in mereology [Hanna] |