Mereology and ideology

Synthese 198 (8):7431-7448 (2020)
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Abstract

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Sider has defended nihilism on the basis of its relative ideological simplicity. In this paper I develop the argument from ideological simplicity, and defend it from some recent objections. Along the way I discuss the best way to formulate nihilism, what it means for a theory to exhibit lesser or greater degrees of ideological simplicity, the relationship between the parthood relation and the identity relation, and the notion that we should judge the ideological simplicity of competing theories on the basis of the kinds of ideological commitments required by those theories.

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Andrew Brenner
Hong Kong Baptist University

Citations of this work

Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Why Composition Matters.Andrew M. Bailey & Andrew Brenner - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (8):934-949.
Ideological innocence.Daniel Rubio - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-22.
Sense Perception and Mereological Nihilism.Andrew Brenner - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 74 (1):68-83.

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References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
Material beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Parts: a study in ontology.Peter M. Simons - 1987 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Objects and Persons.Trenton Merricks - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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