Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-02T09:07:52.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Micro-Composition1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2008

D. H. Mellor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Entities of many kinds, not just material things, have been credited with parts. Armstrong (1978: 36), for example, has taken propositions and properties to be parts of their conjunctions, sets to be parts of sets that include them, and geographical regions and events to be parts of regions and events that contain them. The justification for bringing all these diverse relations under a single ‘part–whole’ concept is that they share all or most of the formal features articulated in mereology (Simons 1987). But the concept has also prompted an ontological thesis that has been expressed in various ways: that wholes are ‘no ontological addition’ to their parts (meaning their proper parts, i.e. not counting a whole as a part of itself); that to list both a whole and its parts is ‘double counting’; and that there is ‘no more’ to a whole than its parts: for example, that there is no more to a conjunction (i.e. to its truth conditions) than the conjuncts that are its parts, and whose truth or falsity determines whether it is true or false. For brevity, I shall express the thesis in the last of these ways, as the claim that entities with parts are ‘nothing but’ those parts.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 62 , July 2008 , pp. 65 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, D. M. (1978) A Theory of Universals. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bhargava, R. (1992) Individualism in Social Science. Oxford, Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duff, R. A. (1998) ‘Responsibility’ in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Craig, E. J.. London, Routledge.Google Scholar
Eddington, A. S. (1929) The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Geach, P. T. (1967) ‘Identity’ in his Logic Matters. Oxford, Blackwell (1972): 238–47.Google Scholar
Hill, T. E. Jr (1998) ‘Respect for Persons’ in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Craig, E. J.. London, Routledge.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, P. (1991) Material Beings. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Keefe, R. and Smith, P., eds (1996) Vagueness: A Reader. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. K. (1973) Counterfactuals. Oxford, Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. K. (1993) ‘Many, but Almost One’ in his Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (1999): 164–82.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. H. (1995) The Facts of Causation. London, Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, D. H. (2006) ‘Wholes and Parts: the Limits of Composition’ South African Journal of Philosophy 25: 138–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mumford, S. (2004) Laws in Nature. London, Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oppenheim, P. and Putnam, H. (1958) ‘Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’ in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 2, ed. Feigl, H. et al. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1948) ‘On What There Is’ in his From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press (1953): 1–19.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, G. N. (1963) Method in the Physical Sciences. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Simons, P. (1987) Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford, Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. (1994) Vagueness. London, Routledge.Google Scholar