230 research outputs found
Between Atomism and Superatomism
There are at least three vaguely atomistic principles that have come up in the literature, two explicitly and one implicitly. First, standard atomism is the claim that everything is composed of atoms, and is very often how atomism is characterized in the literature. Second, superatomism is the claim that parthood is well-founded, which implies that every proper parthood chain terminates, and has been discussed as a stronger alternative to standard atomism. Third, there is a principle that lies between these two theses in terms of its relative strength: strong atomism, the claim that every maximal proper parthood chain terminates. Although strong atomism is equivalent to superatomism in classical extensional mereology, it is strictly weaker than it in strictly weaker systems in which parthood is a partial order. And it is strictly stronger than standard atomism in classical extensional mereology and, given the axiom of choice, in such strictly weaker systems as well. Though strong atomism has not, to my knowledge, been explicitly identified, Shiver appears to have it in mind, though it is unclear whether he recognizes that it is not equivalent to standard atomism in each of the mereologies he considers. I prove these logical relationships which hold amongst these three atomistic principles, and argue that, whether one adopts classical extensional mereology or a system strictly weaker than it in which parthood is a partial order, standard atomism is a more defensible addition to oneâs mereology than either of the other two principles, and it should be regarded as the best formulation of the atomistic thesis
A One Category Ontology
I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. Iâm a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term âpropertiesâ interchangeably with âqualitiesâ. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on oneâs preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic.
On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory
The World Is Either Digital or Analogue
Peer reviewedPreprin
Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science
A collection of papers presented at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo, July 1994, including the following papers:
** Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Barry Smith
** The Bounds of Axiomatisation, Graham White
** Rethinking Boundaries, Wojciech Zelaniec
** Sheaf Mereology and Space Cognition, Jean Petitot
** A Mereotopological Definition of 'Point', Carola Eschenbach
** Discreteness, Finiteness, and the Structure of Topological Spaces, Christopher Habel
** Mass Reference and the Geometry of Solids, Almerindo E. Ojeda
** Defining a 'Doughnut' Made Difficult, N .M. Gotts
** A Theory of Spatial Regions with Indeterminate Boundaries, A.G. Cohn and N.M. Gotts
** Mereotopological Construction of Time from Events, Fabio Pianesi and Achille C. Varzi
** Computational Mereology: A Study of Part-of Relations for Multi-media Indexing, Wlodek Zadrozny and Michelle Ki
An Extensional Mereology for Structured Entities
In this paper, we present an extensional system of mereology suitable to account for the intuitive distinction between heaplike and non-heaplike entities. Since the need to capture this distinction has been a key motivation for non-extensional mereologies, we first assess the main non-extensional systems advanced in the last years and highlight some mereological and metaphysical difficulties they involve. We then advance a novel program, according to which the distinction between heaplike and non-heaplike entities can be accounted for by bringing together the parthood relation characterized by classical extensional mereology and an Aristotelian extensional notion of potential parthood. Thus, while rejecting the thesis of mereological monism, our proposal is consistent with the thesis of mereological extensionalism. We show that within this framework it is possible to characterize the above-mentioned distinction, to define the relation of material constitution, and to capture three fundamental standpoints in metaphysics
Selecting and Customizing a Mereology Ontology for its Reuse in a Pharmaceutical Product Ontology
This paper presents our experience in reusing mereology ontologies in a
Pharmaceutical Product ontology, an ontology built by the EU NeOn project. It
shows a set of mereology ontologies implemented in different machine
interpretable languages and analyzes them according to the different types of
mereology identified by Varzi. Then, it describes the specifications of mereology
modeling necessities for Pharmaceutical Product. Finally, it presents the ontology
which fits best with the specifications. One of the results of this work is a
procedure to reuse general (also called common) ontologies
Formal Theories of Parthood
A compact overview of the main formal theories of parthood and of their mutual relationships, up to Classical Extensional Mereology. Written as an Appendix to the other essays included in the volume
âThe whole is greater than the part.â Mereology in Euclid's Elements
The present article provides a mereological analysis of Euclidâs planar geometry as presented in the first two books of his Elements. As a standard of comparison, a brief survey of the basic concepts of planar geometry formulated in a set-theoretic framework is given in Section 2. Section 3.2, then, develops the theories of incidence and order (of points on a line) using a blend of mereology and convex geometry. Section 3.3 explains Euclidâs âmegethologyâ, i.e., his theory of magnitudes. In Euclidâs system of geometry, megethology takes over the role played by the theory of congruence in modern accounts of geometry. Mereology and megethology are connected by Euclidâs Axiom 5: âThe whole is greater than the part.â Section 4 compares Euclidâs theory of polygonal area, based on his âWhole-Greater-Than-Partâ principle, to the account provided by Hilbert in his Grundlagen der Geometrie. An hypothesis is set forth why modern treatments of geometry abandon Euclidâs Axiom 5. Finally, in Section 5, the adequacy of atomistic mereology as a framework for a formal reconstruction of Euclidâs system of geometry is discussed
How Philosophy of Mind Needs Philosophy of Chemistry
By the 1960s many (perhaps most) philosophers had adopted âphysicalismâ â the view that physical causes fully account for mental activities. However, controversy persists about what count as âphysical causesâ. âReductiveâ physicalists recognize only microphysical (elementary-particle-level) causality. Many (perhaps most) physicalists are ânon-reductiveâ â they hold that entities considered by other (âspecialâ) sciences have causal powers. Philosophy of chemistry can help resolve main issues in philosophy of mind in three ways: developing an extended mereology applicable to chemical combination, testing whether âsingularitiesâ prevent reduction of chemistry to microphysics, and demonstrating âdownward causationâ in complex networks of chemical reactions
- âŠ