Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction

2017-06-29
Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction

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  • Author: Giorgio Lando
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
  • ISBN: 1472583671
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 240

Parthood and composition are everywhere. The leg of a table is part of the table, the word "Christmas" is part of the sentence "I wish you a merry Christmas", the 13th century is part of the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg compose Benelux, the body of a deer is composed of a huge number of cells, the Middle Ages are composed of the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages. Is there really a general theory covering every instance of parthood and composition? Is classical mereology this general theory? Are its seemingly counter-intuitive features serious defects? Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction addresses the multifaceted and lively philosophical debates surrounding these questions, and defends the idea that classical mereology is indeed the general and exhaustive theory of parthood and composition in the domain of concrete entities. Several examples of parthood and composition, involving entities of different kinds, are scrutinised in depth. Incidentally, mereology is shown to interact in a surprising way with metaontology. Presenting a well-organized and comprehensive discussion of parthood and related notions, Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction contributes to a better understanding of a subject central to contemporary metaphysics.

Mereology

2021-07-08
Mereology

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  • Author: A. J. Cotnoir
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0198749007
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 422

Is a whole something more than the sum of its parts? Are there things composed of the same parts? If you divide an object into parts, and divide those parts into smaller parts, will this process ever come to an end? Can something lose parts or gain new ones without ceasing to be the thing it is? Does any multitude of things (including disparate things such as you, this book, and the tail of a cat) compose a whole of some sort? Questions such as these have occupied us for at least as long as philosophy has existed. They define the field that has come to be known as mereology-the study of all relations of part to whole and of part to part within a whole-and have deep and far-reaching ramifications in metaphysics as well as in logic, the foundations of mathematics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and beyond. In Mereology, A. J. Cotnoir and Achille C. Varzi have compiled decades of advanced research into a comprehensive, up-to-date, and formally rigorous picture. The early chapters cover the more classical aspects of mereology; the rest of the book deals with variants and extensions. Whether you are an established professional philosopher, an interested student, or a newcomer, inside you will find all the tools you need to join this ever-evolving field of inquiry and theorize about all things mereological.

Mereology and Location

2014
Mereology and Location

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  • Author: Shieva Kleinschmidt
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0199593825
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 290

A team of leading philosophers presents original work on theories of parthood and of location. Topics covered include how we ought to axiomatise our mereology, whether we can reduce mereological relations to identity or to locative relations, whether Mereological Essentialism is true, different ways in which entities persist through space, time, spacetime, and even hypertime, conflicting intuitions we have about space, and what mereology and propositions can tell us about one another. The breadth and accessibility of the papers make this volume an excellent introduction for those not yet working on these topics. Further, the papers contain important contributions to these central areas of metaphysics, and thus are essential reading for anyone working in the field.

Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction

2017-06-29
Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction

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  • Author: Giorgio Lando
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
  • ISBN: 147258368X
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 240

Parthood and composition are everywhere. The leg of a table is part of the table, the word "Christmas" is part of the sentence "I wish you a merry Christmas", the 13th century is part of the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg compose Benelux, the body of a deer is composed of a huge number of cells, the Middle Ages are composed of the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages. Is there really a general theory covering every instance of parthood and composition? Is classical mereology this general theory? Are its seemingly counter-intuitive features serious defects? Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction addresses the multifaceted and lively philosophical debates surrounding these questions, and defends the idea that classical mereology is indeed the general and exhaustive theory of parthood and composition in the domain of concrete entities. Several examples of parthood and composition, involving entities of different kinds, are scrutinised in depth. Incidentally, mereology is shown to interact in a surprising way with metaontology. Presenting a well-organized and comprehensive discussion of parthood and related notions, Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction contributes to a better understanding of a subject central to contemporary metaphysics.

Mereology and the Sciences

2014-06-02
Mereology and the Sciences

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  • Author: Claudio Calosi
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 3319053566
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 389

This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed.

Parts

1987
Parts

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  • Author: Peter Simons
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
  • ISBN: 9780199241460
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 390

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, yet until now there has been no full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of such classical philosophical concepts as identity, individual, class, substance and accident, matter, form, essence, dependence, and integral whole. It also enables the author to offer new solutions to long-standing problems surrounding these concepts, such as the Ship of Theseus Problem and the issue of mereological essentialism. The author shows by his use of formal techniques that classical philosophical problems are amenable to rigorous treatment, and the book represents a synthesis of issues and methods from the analytical tradition and from the older continental realist tradition of Brentano and the early Husserl.

Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar

2017-12-14
Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar

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  • Author: Ross D. Inman
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1351660047
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 447

Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar explicates and defends a novel neo-Aristotelian account of the structure of material objects. While there have been numerous treatments of properties, laws, causation, and modality in the neo-Aristotelian metaphysics literature, this book is one of the first full-length treatments of wholes and their parts. Another aim of the book is to further develop the newly revived area concerning the question of fundamental mereology, the question of whether wholes are metaphysically prior to their parts or vice versa. Inman develops a fundamental mereology with a grounding-based conception of the structure and unity of substances at its core, what he calls substantial priority, one that distinctively allows for the fundamentality of ordinary, medium-sized composite objects. He offers both empirical and philosophical considerations against the view that the parts of every composite object are metaphysically prior, in particular the view that ascribes ontological pride of place to the smallest microphysical parts of composite objects, which currently dominates debates in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. Ultimately, he demonstrates that substantial priority is well-motivated in virtue of its offering a unified solution to a host of metaphysical problems involving material objects.

Medieval Mereology

1991-01-01
Medieval Mereology

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  • Author: Desmond Paul Henry
  • Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
  • ISBN: 9027277990
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 637

Mereology is the theory which deals with parts and wholes in the concrete sense, and this study follows its varied fortunes during the Middle Ages. Preliminary indications as to its metaphysical situation are followed by a brief sketch of Boethius' contribution. Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Clarembald of Arras, and Joscelin of Soissons are among the twelfth-century authors examined. The effect of the subsequent recovery of Aristotle's Metaphysica on Mereology is typified by sketches of the many and varied uses made of the latter by Aquinas. A brief sample of Buridanian treatment is followed by an account of those applications made under the umbrella of thirteenth-century comment on Aristotle's De Sophisticis Elenchis. The curiously original theories of Wyclif are brought to light, as also also samples from Walter Bruleigh, Nicholas of Paris, William of Ockham, and Paul of Venice. Readers interested in such subjects as logic, metaphysics, philosophy, theology, linguistics, pyschology, and their history, will find the work relevant to their studies. No logical symbolism is used in the main body of the book, but some contemporary background is appended so that those who wish to do so may follow it up.

Mereology and Location

2014-01-09
Mereology and Location

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  • Author: Shieva Kleinschmidt
  • Publisher: OUP Oxford
  • ISBN: 0191662879
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 256

A team of leading philosophers presents original work on theories of parthood and of location. Topics covered include how we ought to axiomatise our mereology, whether we can reduce mereological relations to identity or to locative relations, whether Mereological Essentialism is true, different ways in which entities persist through space, time, spacetime, and even hypertime, conflicting intuitions we have about space, and what mereology and propositions can tell us about one another. The breadth and accessibility of the papers make this volume an excellent introduction for those not yet working on these topics. Further, the papers contain important contributions to these central areas of metaphysics, and thus are essential reading for anyone working in the field.

Composition as Identity

2014
Composition as Identity

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  • Author: A. J. Cotnoir
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
  • ISBN: 0199669619
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 271

This collection of essays is the first of its kind to focus on the relationship between composition and identity. Twelve original articles--written by internationally renowned scholars and rising stars in the field--argue for and against the controversial doctrine that composition is identity.--Provided by publisher.