To what extend can genuinely mereological considerations apply to talk of wholes and parts in discussions of the relationship between individual persons and the social groups, etc. to which they belong?

The paper argues that very different part-whole relations hold between different kinds of entities. While these relations share most of their formal properties, they need not share all of them. Nor need other mereological principles be true of all kinds of part–whole pairs. In particular, it is argued that the principle of unrestricted composition, that any two or more entities have a mereological sum, while true of sets and propositions, is false of things and events.

IF WE CAN EXPLAIN CAUSALLY EACH EVENT OF A SERIES, CAN WE THEREBY EXPLAIN CAUSALLY THE WHOLE SERIES? THE PRINCIPLES DEVELOPED IN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION ENTAIL THAT EVEN IF WE CAN EXPLAIN CAUSALLY THE OCCURRENCE OF THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE AT EACH TEMPORAL INSTANT, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE CAN EXPLAIN CAUSALLY THE OCCURRENCE OF ALL THOSE STATES.

Whenever the name Edmund Husserl appears in the context of nursing research, what correctly comes to mind is the phenomenological approach to qualitative methodology. Husserl is not only considered the founder of phenomenology, but his broad concept development also contributed to the demise of positivism and inspired fruitful approaches to the social sciences. In this spirit of inspiration, it must be expressed that Husserl's theory of wholes and parts, and particularly his differentiation of parts into ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’, (...) is very helpful in guiding the selection of research methods across the board in nursing science. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a frame of reference for nursing researchers to use in examining the essential nature of that which is being studied. This frame of reference is the Husserlian philosophy of ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’ in relation to the whole. ‘Pieces’ are independent parts of the whole that are subject to isolability in study, whereas ‘moments’ are nonindependent parts, which cannot be detached, presented, or studied apart from the whole. The intent is to propose this frame of reference as a philosophical base from which nursing researchers may better select among paradigms and methodological approaches in regard to the essential nature (‘pieces’ or ‘moments’) of that which they are researching. (shrink)

My departed point is the assessment that plurality in broadest sense characterizing any post- (for example: post-modernity, post-metaphysical, etc.) context is first of all plurality of whole. We may speak about wholes, movement of whole, and lack of any universal whole. Part do not already belongs to whole implicitly granted and common of all other parts. Now we may speak of parts in another relation: non of parts as parts of some common (...) of all parts whole, but parts of difference wholes, and at the same time without any universal whole common of all the wholes. The paper is devoted concretely to the influence of such a comprehension of whole upon some basic notion of physics (especially quantum mechanics and information, relativity) and mathematics, namely probability, set, movement,time. Their changes exert influence upon the fundamental pbilosophical concepts of being and time, knowledge and being-in-the-world. The new conception of fractal, and its meaning in philosophy points out, too. Constancy and always existing of whole is equivalent to Newton time, energy conservation law, local realism and ''hidden parameters" of any correlations, a union of sets exists always if the two sets are granted. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Themed Section of Bruniana & Campanelliana 2022/1, pp. 85-198 -/- - Simone Guidi, Introduction; - Andrew W. Arlig, Part-Whole Interdependence and the Presence of Form in Matter According to Some Fifteenth-Century Platonists; - Jean-Pascal Anfray, Aux limites de la métaphysique: parties, indivisibles et contact chez Suárez; - Simone Guidi, Indivisibles, Parts, and Wholes in Rubio’s Treatise on the Composition of Continuum (1605); - Dana Jalobeanu, Dissecting Nature ad vivum: Parts and Wholes in Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy; (...) - Carla Rita Palmerino, From Active Matter to Inertia, from Celerity to Slowness: the Motion of Atoms and of Compound Bodies in Gassendi’s Physics. (shrink)

Mereonominalism, holonominalism, and part-whole realism represent competing views on the metaphysics of parts and wholes. Mereonominalism claims that what parts exist is a function of the concepts we use in describing composite wholes. Holonominalism claims that what composite wholes exist is a function of the concepts we use in describing things that can qualify as parts. Part-whole realism claims that parts and wholes exist independent of our concepts. I argue that all three views face (...) problems, but that the problem facing part-whole realism can be solved by adopting a version of hylomorphism that takes its cue from Aristotle’s account of form. (shrink)

Since the early 1980s, metonymy has progressively gained central stage in linguistic investigations. The advent of cognitive linguistics marked a new turn in the study of this trope conceived, not as a deviation from semantic conventions, but as a phenomenon rooted in non-language-specific mechanisms of conceptualization of the world. Acknowledging that metonymy is ultimately cognitive in nature, this paper proposes to consider metonymy from its multiple levels of manifestation, integrating cognitive, pragmatic, semantic, but also ontological angles of approach. Taking (...) class='Hi'>whole-for-part metonymies as a case study, I aim to show how recent developments within these respective disciplines can enrich our understanding of such metonymic mechanisms, sometimes without even identifying them as such. This paper proposes to establish a dialog between these disciplines on the topic of WP-metonymy. So, after a presentation of the most standard cognitive and pragmatic approaches to WP-metonymy, I will argue for the relevance of recent semantic investigations on quantity gradability, and for the theoretical importance of keeping these two kinds of part-reference clearly apart. I will show that the literature on gradability provides strong semantic arguments for doing so. Finally, connecting the debate on WP-metonymy with the ontological debate on property inherence will open the way for a formal treatment of WP-metonymy within ground logic. (shrink)

The strongly innovative theory of whole-parts relations outlined by Husserl in his Third logical Investigation—to which he attributed a basic value for his entire phenomenology—has recently attracted a renewed interest. Although many important issues have been clarified (especially by Kit Fine) the subject seems still worth being revisited. To this aim Husserlian universes are introduced. These are lower bounded distributive lattices endowed with a unary operation of defect and a binary relation of isogeneity. Husserl's contents are identified with (...) nonzero elements of a Husserlian universe and the dependence relations among contents are defined and studied starting from the idea that the defect of xis what x needs in order to ‘exist’ i.e., in order to be ‘closed’ with respect to the closure operation defined as the sup of x and its defect. It turns out that there are (at least) eight dependence relations which are worth to be considered. Many other questions concerning the world of contents (among them the proofs of the famous Husserl's Sätze) may now be discussed and clarified. Then the theory of species and genera is developed. Ultimate species (for short: species) are identified with equivalence classes of contents modulo isogeneity, and species in general (for short: genera) are identified with arbitrary unions of species. On the basis of the relation obtaining among two contents when they are isogeneous to two contents the first of which is a part of the second it becomes possible to develop a rather satisfying interpretation of Husserl's theory of the dependencies among species and genera and of the material a priori laws. By strengthening the notion of Husserlian universe into the notion of rigid Husserlian universe, the theory of species and genera obtains a stronger version. Three models of the theory are exhibited. The first one, suggested by combinatorial-topological considerations, identifies contents with finite non-empty sets of natural numbers; the second one identifies contents with non-empty sets of formulas of a formal language; the third one (not totally ‘rigid’) identifies contents with positive integers. (shrink)

Gordon P. Barnes has recently argued that presence by power is inadequate as an explanation of the way elements are present in complex bodies, and that it would be better to explain the elements’ presence by claiming that simpler substances—carbon atoms, for example—are actually and substantially present in living things. In order to address his arguments, this paper begins by briefly presenting St. Thomas’s understanding of presence by power, and then argues that Barnes’s proposal—that there is a multiplicity of substantial (...) forms in one matter—is unsatisfactory. First, the paper explains why the scientific facts do not require a plurality of substantial forms. Second, it shows how Barnes’s theory does not adequately explain living things. Third, it argues against Barnes’s claim that St. Thomas’s explanation is insufficient because it denies "the universal causality of nature.". (shrink)

What is the relation between parts taken together and the whole that they compose? The recent literature appears to be dominated by two different answers to this question, which are normally thought of as being incompatible. According to the first, parts taken together are identical to the whole that they compose. According to the second, the whole is grounded in its parts. The aim of this paper is to make some theoretical room for the (...) view according to which parts ground the whole they compose while being, at the same time, identical to it. (shrink)

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do-and what can happen to them-is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules (...) of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first section of this book explores how powers divide; the second section how powers compose. The final section showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic. (shrink)

In this essay we aim to present some considerations regarding a minimal but concrete notion of agency and goal-directed behavior that are useful for characterizing biological systems at different scales. These considerations are a particular perspective, bringing together concepts from dynamical systems, combinatorial problem-solving, and connectionist learning with an emphasis on the relationship between parts and wholes. This perspective affords some ways to think about agents that are concrete and quantifiable, and relevant to some important biological issues. Instead of (...) advocating for a strict definition of minimally agential characteristics, we focus on how (even for a modest notion of agency) the agency of a system can be more than the sum of the agency of its parts. We quantify this in terms of the problem-solving competency of a system with respect to resolution of the frustrations between its parts. This requires goal-directed behavior in the sense of delayed gratification, i.e., taking dynamical trajectories that forego short-term gains (or sustain short-term stress or frustration) in favor of long-term gains. In order for this competency to belong to the system (rather than to its parts or given by its construction or design), it can involve distributed systemic knowledge that is acquired through experience, i.e., changes in the organization of the relationships among its parts (without presupposing a system-level reward function for such changes). This conception of agency helps us think about the ways in which cells, organisms, and perhaps other biological scales, can be agential (i.e., more agential than their parts) in a quantifiable sense, without denying that the behavior of the whole depends on the behaviors of the parts in their current organization. (shrink)

This book present a unified semantic theory of expressions involving the notions of part and whole. It develops a theory of part structures which differs from traditional (extensional) mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions. The book presents a great range of empirical generalizations involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such (...) as 'whole', 'together', and 'alone', nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as 'completely' and 'partly'. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Donald Davidson is among the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. This volume includes some 30 essays which variously criticize, comment on and develop Davidson's philosophy as represented in his collected papers "Essays on Actions and Events", in addition to three further essays by Davidson himself. The essays divide into three sections, each opening with an editorial introduction and corresponding to the three major sections of "Actions and Events". The first section discusses the nature of rational (...) explanation, the relationships between reasons and actions, intentions and actions, will and irrationality, and the concepts of agency, freedom and weakness of the will. This section also contains an essay in which Davidson presents his views on self-deception. The second section considers the nature of events, causal relationships, and the logical form of action and singular causal statements. Finally, the volume looks at the relationship between the mental and the physical, the scientific status of psychological and psychophysical laws, and the relationship between laws and causal and rational explanations. (shrink)

What is the relation between a whole and its parts? The metaphysics of structure and composition is much discussed in modern philosophy; now Verity Harte provides the first sustained examination of Plato's rich but neglected discussion of the topic, and shows how it can illuminate current debates. This book is an invaluable resource both for scholars of Plato and for modern metaphysicians.

Since the early 80s, metonymy has progressively gained central stage in linguistic investigations. The advent of cognitive linguistics marked a new turn in the study of this trope conceived, not as a deviation from semantic conventions (contra classical rhetorical theories), but as a phenomenon rooted in non-language-specific mechanisms of conceptualization and structuring of the world. Focusing on the particular case of whole-for-part (WP) metonymy, the general stand of this presentation will be to argue for the need to re-inject properly (...) semantic (descriptive and formal) considerations in the study of metonymy. It will be shown that semantic typologies of meronymic relations, as well as recent results in the semantics of partial predicates and colour predicates, can be jointly exploited to attain a better understanding of the mechanism of WP-metonymy. The resulting view will in particular connect such metonymies to mechanisms of reference and property attribution to functional parts for classificatory purposes. (shrink)

In this paper I continue to explore some of the problems I believe one encounters when attempting to unravel the ontology of person. I maintain my interest for classical philosophical theories which were equally concerned with this matter. I draw upon Hume’s philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology by indicating their conceptual differences relevant to my current topic, but I adopt a thought-expe-rimental approach. That because, on the one hand, my purpose is not to reconstruct the logic of these philosophers in (...) details, but to select some of the features of their theories in order to later integrate them in what I hope it will become an improved philosophical analysis. On the other hand, I have reasons to believe, that any philosophical discussion about the ontology of person begins with implications which preclude the possibility of objective descriptions, if such descriptions are even possible, that being another way to argue that we cannot claim to have a science of person without clarifying the limits of philosophical conceivability. (shrink)

This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but can't. For instance, why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran to the store for five minutes? Why is five pounds of books acceptable, but *five pounds of book not acceptable? What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a (...) swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth? And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous? The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect, plural and mass reference, measurement, and distributivity. In this book, Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains, connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology, and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above. (shrink)

It is often held that according to Aristotle the city is a natural organism. One major reason for this organic interpretation is no doubt that Aristotle describes the relationship between the individual and the city as a part-whole relationship, seemingly the same relationship that holds between the parts of a natural organism and the organism itself. Moreover, some scholars (most notably Jonathan Barnes) believe this view of the city led Aristotle to accept an implicit totalitarianism. I argue, however, (...) that an investigation of the various ways Aristotle describes parts and wholes reveals that for Aristotle the city has a unity (and thus a nature) quite different from that of a natural organism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper pointed out that Hegel's philosophy, which several important methodological principle, and self-described conduct in the spirit of the dialectical movement in the main content and rhythm patterns. The first part I will point out that "the specific dialectical thinking" and "organic whole concept of self-development" is the main features of Hegel's thought. And in the second part of the argument: to show itself as a spiritual movement accreditation, which consists of the same state (...) of self out of the original, self-denial, to return to their own, including poor and reach their own community and the higher of the same stand, and towards the infinite intrinsic activities of self-purpose. (shrink)

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do--and what can happen to them--is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules (...) of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first section of this book explores how powers divide; the second section how powers compose. The final section showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic. (shrink)

Section 1. Prologue -- section 2. The whole being -- section 3. Engaging with wholeness -- section 4. Wholeness in Kashmiri Shaivism -- section 5. The Buddhist perspective -- section 6. Wholeness in the modern world -- section 7. The workings of wholeness in our world -- section 8. Epilogue.

Leibniz argues against Descartes’s conception of material substance based on considerations of unity. I examine a key premise of Leibniz’s argument, what I call the Plurality Thesis—the claim that matter (i.e. extension alone) is a plurality of parts. More specifically, I engage an objection to the Plurality Thesis stemming from what I call Material Monism—the claim that the physical world is a single material substance. I argue that Leibniz can productively engage this objection based on his view that matter (...) is discrete. The discreteness of matter provides two aspects of support for the Plurality Thesis. First, it indicates that the parts of matter do not share boundaries and are, therefore, independent in an important sense. Second, it indicates that the parts of matter are determinate and are, therefore, ontologically prior to the wholes they compose. (shrink)

How can the power of wholes be resisted without essentializing their parts? Drawing on different archives and methodologies, including aesthetics, history, biology, affect, race, and queer, the interventions in this volume explore different ways of troubling the consistency and stability of wholes, breaking up their closure and making them more dynamic. Doing so without necessarily presupposing or producing parts, an outside, or a teleological development, they indicate the critical potential of partiality without parts.

This article argues that the second part of the Parmenides (137-166) consists not only of the well-known logical structure that has been widely studied but also of a great variety of definitions of forms. My aim is to show how these definitions depend on a specific group of closely connected primary forms (i.e., same, different, part, whole). The definitions that Parmenides provides help Socrates overcome his failure in attempting to define forms in the first part of the dialogue.

This paper presents a theory of situated part structures involving the notion of an integrated and not just a part-of relation. The theory is applied in particular to the semantics of the modifiers 'whole' and 'individual', as in 'the whole collection' and 'the individual students'. The adnominal modifiers 'whole' and 'individual' have been entirely been ignored in the linguistic and philosophical literature, even though they pose significant challenges for standard views of reference, of the semantics of referential (...) NPs, and for ontology (the exception being medieval philosophy of language where 'whole' has received significant attention). 'Whole' strikingly displays two opposite readings: 'The whole collection is expensive' can mean - 'as a whole' or 'every part'. The paper proposes that the two readings be traced to two different conceptions of part structures of objects: one according to which the parts of an objects are just the material parts and another, Aristotelian conception according to which the parts of an object include properties of form. (shrink)

Beginning with a widespread definition of Decadence as when individual parts flourish at the expense of the whole, Regenia Gagnier - a leading cultural historian of late nineteenth-century Britain - shows the full range of meanings of individualism at the height of its promise. From Darwin and Mill to the Fin de Siècle and beyond, Gagnier establishes the individual in relation to its theoretical and practical contexts: the couple and parent/child dyad; the workshop and community; the nation and (...) state; cosmopolis and world-citizenship. She concludes that the relation of individual to social or part to whole is better understood in terms of dynamic functions than fixed identities. Some highlights in this richly detailed study include: the evolutionary and developmental sciences of the individual; Herbert Spencer and the Individualists; Matthew Arnold and the Culturalists; the New Women, Female Aesthetes, and Socialist Individualists; poetry and the Philosophy of the Will; Gypsy Lorists and Cultural Philanthropy; Nietzsche’s Good Europeans and Late Victorian Cosmopolitans; the doctrine of mystical substitution of the one for the many. No one gives a fuller picture of the individual in modernity. (shrink)

Philosophical questions concerning parts and wholes have received a tremendous amount of the attention of contemporary analytic metaphysicians. In what follows, I discuss some of the central questions. The questions to be discussed are: how general is parthood? Are there different kinds of parthood or ways to be a part? Can two things be composed of the same parts? When does composition occur? Can material objects gain or lose parts? What is the logical form of the parthood (...) relation enjoyed by material objects? (shrink)

The approach adopted by Early Modern authors to the notions of ‘whole’ and ‘part’ (what is called, in contemporary metaphysics, “mereology”, from the Ancient Greek word μερος: ‘part’) constitutes a central feature of their respective systems. The issue of what constituted a whole became all the more crucial as the new, revolutionary approaches to matter and extension – which mark the unavoidably fuzzy beginning of what we define as “modernity” – demanded a novel (and in some cases, radical) (...) approach to the questions of what constitutes a whole and how parts are arranged and bound together. It is important to mention that diverse attitudes towards mereology characterised Early Modern philosophers orthogonally to their belonging to different camps, such as the traditional categories of ‘Rationalists’ and ‘Empiricists’. Some of these philosophers considered wholes to be ontologically and/or logically prior to their parts (an approach that we may call “organicist” or “holist”, applying an anachronistic but nonetheless appropriate label). Others considered wholes to be derivative, resulting from the union of their parts (an approach that could be named “mereological mechanism”). Therefore, a word about terminology is in order: in what follows, I will apply the label “holist/organicist” to refer to a philosopher who would favour the priority of wholes over parts. Vice versa, I shall label as a “mereological mechanist” any philosopher favouring the priority of parts over the wholes formed by those parts, regardless of such parts being exclusively material, or including spiritual/mental parts as well as material ones. (shrink)

Although dual-process or divided-mind models of self-control dominate the literature, they suffer from empirical and conceptual challenges. We propose an alternative approach, suggesting that self-control can be characterized by a fragmented part versus integrated whole dynamic. Whereas responses to events derived from fragmented parts of the mind undermine self-control, responses to events derived from integrated wholes enhance self-control. We review empirical evidence from psychology and related disciplines that support this model. We, moreover, discuss the implications of this work (...) for psychology, neuroscience, economics, and philosophy. In particular, we highlight how this model addresses many of the conceptual and empirical short-comings of divided-mind models. We suggest that understanding self-control as the interplay between fragmented parts versus integrated wholes, moreover, provides novel insights and testable new hypotheses. (shrink)

The texts written by Huayan thinkers are characterized by rather unintelligible expressions that identify the one with the many. Such an identity thesis can be justified by the fact that all individual objects in the world are based on the common principle of emptiness (Skt. śūnyatā). But we need to take into consideration the fact that Huayan thought emerged from the typical Chinese attitude that appreciates the inherent value of every phenomenal object. Thus the relationship between the one and the (...) many in Huayan thought can be understood in terms of the parts and the whole composed of such parts. Generally speaking, Buddhist literature in the early phase seems to represent the so-called mereological reductionism because it aims at revealing that the concept of “I” or “person” as a whole is illusory. Huayan thought points out, however, that the parts and the whole are equally significant and mutually dependent. Furthermore, it identifies the parts with the whole by showing the existence of parts of an object is a necessary and sufficient condition for that of the object as a whole. It is important to note here that Huayan thought does not simply indulge in metaphysical speculations but emphasizes its soteriological purport that an initial stage of practice contains its whole process. Although Huayan thought has been often dubbed as a philosophy of totality and considered to uphold totalitarianism, such a misunderstanding could be redressed by a survey conducted in this paper. Furthermore, since Huayan thought does not posit a singular and ultimate cause but prioritizes each and every individual, it should be seen as having a profound practical significance in this polarized society. 화엄사상가들의 저작에서 우리는 일(一)과 다(多) 사이에 동일성의 관계가 성립한다는 다소 이해하기 어려운 표현을 자주 발견한다. 그러한 동일성의 관계는 모든 개별적 사물들이 공(空)이라고 하는 공통된 이치에 기반하고 있기 때문에 성립하는 것이기도 하지만, 그 관계를 해석하는 데 있어서 우리는 모든 현상적 대상들의 고유한 가치를 인정하는 중국적 태도에서 화엄사상이 출현했다는 점을 고려할 필요가 있다. 따라서 화엄사상에서 일과 다 사이의 관계는 어떠한 하나의 현상적 대상 전체와 그것을 구성하는 부분들 사이의 관계를 가리킨다고 볼 수 있다. 일반적으로 초기불교의 문헌에서는 여러 요소들이 결합된 총체로서의 ‘나’ 또는 ‘인간’이라는 개념의 허구성을 지적하기 위하여 전체를 부분들로 환원하여 전체라는 것이 개념적 허구임을 보이는 부분론적 환원주의(mereological reductionism)를 채택하는 경향이 있었다. 그러나 화엄사상은 부분과 전체가 모두 유의미할 뿐만 아니라 아니라 상호 의존적임을 지적하고, 더 나아가 어떤 대상의 부분들은 그 대상 전체의 성립을 위한 필요충분조건임을 보임으로써 부분과 전체를 동일시한다. 그러나 화엄사상의 이러한 입장은 순전히 형이상학적 사변에만 머물지 않고 수행의 최초의 단계에 그것의 전과정이 포함되어 있다는 실천론적 의미를 내포하고 있다는 점에 유의해야 한다. 이러한 고찰을 통해 우리는 화엄사상을 흔히 전체성의 철학(philosophy of totality)이라고 규정함으로써 그것을 마치 전체주의를 옹호하는 것처럼 오도하는 경향을 바로잡을 수 있을 것이다. 또한 화엄사상은 어떠한 단일하고 궁극적인 원인을 상정하지 않고 각각의 개별자들을 우선시한다는 점에서 다원화된 사회에서 더욱 적합한 실천론적 의미를 가지고 있다고 할 수 있다. (shrink)

A well-rehearsed move among teleological realists in the philosophy of biology is to base the idea of genuinely teleological forms of organic self-reproduction on a type of causality derived from Kant. Teleological realists have long argued for the causal possibility of this form of causality—in which a whole is considered the cause of its parts—as well as formulated a set of teleological criteria of adequacy for it. What is missing, to date, is an account of the mereological (...) principles that govern the envisioned whole-to-part causality. When the latter principles are taken into account, we find that there is no version of whole-to-part causality that is mereologically, causally and teleologically possible all at once, as teleological realism requires. (shrink)

In his book, The Principles of Mathematics , the young Bertrand Russell abandoned the common-sense notion that the whole must be greater than its part, and argued that wholes and their parts can be similar, e.g. where both are infinite series, the one being a sub-series of the other. He also rejected the popular view that the idea of an infinite number is self-contradictory, and that an infinite set or collection is an impossibility. In this paper, I intend (...) to re-examine Russell's wisdom in doing both these things, and see if it might not have made more sense, and caused his enterprise fewer problems, if he had simply stuck to our commonplace ideas. To this end, I shall also be considering his treatment of certain paradoxes that he claims can only be resolved by the abandonment of the above notions, as well as certain others which his theories appear to have generated. (shrink)