Synthese 198 (Suppl 18):4467-4501 (
2018)
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Abstract
Say that some things compose something, if the latter is a whole, fusion, or mereological sum of the former. Then the thesis that composition is identity holds that the composition relation is a kind of identity relation, a plural cousin of singular identity. On this thesis, any things that compose a whole are identical with the whole. This article argues that the thesis is incoherent. To do so, the article formulates the thesis in a plural language, a symbolic language that includes counterparts of plural constructions of natural languages, and shows that it implies that nothing has a proper part. Then the article argues that the thesis, as its proponents take it, is incoherent because they take it to imply or presuppose that some things have proper parts.