Category: Wholes and Parts
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Bonum Progressionis and the Value of One’s Life
The value of a whole is not determined merely by the values of the parts of the whole; the order of the parts also plays a role in determining the value of the whole. One of several order principles governing the value of a whole is the bonum progressionis. Glossing Franz Brentano, R. M. Chisholm (Brentano and…
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How Are Form and Matter Related in Compound Material Substances?
Favoring as I do constituent ontology, I am sympathetic to that type of constituent ontology which is hylomorphic ontological analysis, as practiced by Aristotelians, Thomists, et al. The obscurity of such fundamental concepts as form, matter, act, potency, substance, and others is, however, troubling. Let's see if we can make sense of the relation between form…
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Can the Chariot Take Us to the Land of No Self?
An abbreviated version of the following paper was published under the same title in The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy, vol. 9, ed. Stephen Voss (Ankara, Turkey), 2006, pp. 29-33. ………………. According to Buddhist ontology, every (samsaric) being is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and devoid of self-nature. Anicca, dukkha, anatta: these are the famous…
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Is the Difference Between a Fact and Its Constituents a Brute Difference?
Note to Steven Nemes: Tell me if you find this totally clear, and if not, point out what is unclear. Tell me whether you accept my overall argument. The day before yesterday in conversation Steven Nemes presented a challenge I am not sure I can meet. I have maintained (in my book, in published articles,…
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Review : Modes of Being
Herewith, a little summary of part of what I have been arguing. Most analytic philosophers would accept (A) but not (B): A. There are kinds of existent but no kinds of existence.B. There are kinds of existent and also kinds of existence. I have been defending the intelligibility of (B) but without committing myself to any particular MOB…
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Wholes, Parts, and Modes of Being
Do wholes and their parts exist in different ways? The analytic establishment is hostile to modes of being, but its case is weak. Indeed some establishmentarians make no case at all; they simply bluster and asseverate and beg the question. I wonder how a member of the establishment would counter the following argument. Consider a house…
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Two Questions About the Bundle Theory Answered
On the bundle-of-universals theory of ordinary concrete particulars, such a particular is a bundle of its properties and its properties are universals. This theory will appeal to those who, for various ontological and epistemological reasons, resist substratum theories and think of properties as universals. Empiricists like Bertrand Russell, for example. Powerful objections can be brought…
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Definitions and Axioms of Classical Mereology
Is a wall or a brick house a whole of its parts? Obviously — that's a pre-analytic datum. But is it a sum of its parts? I have been arguing, with no particular originality, in the negative. I have been arguing that it is a big mistake to assume that, just because y is a whole of…
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A Closer Look at Material Composition and Modal Discernibility Arguments
(For David Brightly, whom I hope either to convince or argue to a standoff.) Suppose God creates ex nihilo a bunch of TinkerToy pieces at time t suitable for assembly into various (toy) artifacts such as a house and a fort. A unique classical mereological sum — call it 'TTS' — comes into existence 'automatically'…
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Fregean Propositions, Unmereological Compositions, and Bradley’s Regress
Steven Nemes writes and I respond in blue: I know you're in a bit of a mereology phase at the moment, but I figured I'd shoot this by you. Mereology is the theory of parts and wholes. Now propositions, whether Fregean or Russellian, are wholes of parts. So mereology is not irrelevant to questions about…
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Varzi, Sums, and Wholes
Achille C. Varzi, "The Extensionality of Parthood and Composition," The Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008), p. 109: Suppose we have a house made of Tinkertoy pieces. Then the house qualifies as a sum of those pieces: each piece is part of the house and each part of the house overlaps at least one of the pieces .…
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Four-Dimensionalism to the Rescue?
Let us return to that impressive product of porcine ingenuity, Brick House. Brick House, whose completion by the Wise Pig occurred on Friday, is composed entirely of the 10,000 Tuesday Bricks. I grant that there is a sum, call it 'Brick Sum,' that is the classical mereological sum of the Tuesday Bricks. Brick Sum is…
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Van Inwagen on Arbitrary Undetached Parts
In order to get clear about Dion-Theon and related identity puzzles we need to get clear about the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts (DAUP) and see what bearing it has on the puzzles. Peter van Inwagen provides the following statement of DAUP: For every material object M, if R is the region of space occupied…
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Can a Mereological Sum Change its Parts?
This post is an attempt to understand and evaluate Peter van Inwagen's "Can Mereological Sums Change Their Parts," J. Phil. (December 2006), 614-630. A preprint is available online here. The Wise Pig and the Brick House: My Take On Tuesday the Wise Pig takes delivery of 10,000 bricks. On the following Friday he completes construction…
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Van Inwagen Contra Lewis on Composition as Identity
Modifying an example employed by Donald Baxter and David Lewis, suppose I own a parcel of land A consisting of exactly two adjoining lots B and C. It would be an insane boast were I to claim to own three parcels of land, B, C, and A. That would be 'double-counting': I count A as…