mereology

Literally, ‘theory of parts’. Term introduced by the Polish logician Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939) to cover a theory which used the whole/part relation as a substitute for the class-membership relation to deal with the structure of classes in ways that would avoid various difficulties connected with the vicious CIRCLE PRINCIPLE and the theory of types. (The term also has a technical use within the theory itself.)

The point about the whole/part relation is that, unlike class-membership, it is transitive; that is if a is a part of b, and b is a part of c, then a is a part of c.

The notion has also been used (by N Goodman, The Structure of Appearance (1951)) to deal with problems concerning stuffs (like water) or general qualities (like red): ‘water’ is taken to be a name for the total quantity of water in the universe (so that the Pacific Ocean counts as a part of water); similarly ‘red’, in naming the colour red, names the totality of red things, treated as a single large object split up over space.

Source:
P Simons, Parts (1987), ch. 1

Related:

• causal theory of names
• Hempel’s paradox
• simple theory of types
• descriptive theory of names
• picture theory of meaning

Videos

Related Products

 

Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction

• Lando, Giorgio (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 248 Pages - 12/27/2018 (Publication Date) - Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Handbook of Mereology (Analytica)

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• Burkhardt (Founding Editor), Hans (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 919 Pages - 08/09/2018 (Publication Date) - Philosophia (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology (Routledge Studies in Metaphysics)

• Hardcover Book
• Inman, Ross D. (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 318 Pages - 12/15/2017 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Metaphysical Foundations: Mereology and Metalogic (Analytica)

• Hardcover Book
• Martin, R. M. (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 386 Pages - 05/01/1986 (Publication Date) - Philosophia Verlag Gmbh (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Mereology and the Sciences: Parts and Wholes in the Contemporary Scientific Context (Synthese Library)

• Hardcover Book
• English (Publication Language)
• 378 Pages - 06/03/2014 (Publication Date) - Springer (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Mereologies, Ontologies, and Facets: The Categorial Structure of Reality

• Hardcover Book
• English (Publication Language)
• 282 Pages - 07/15/2018 (Publication Date) - Lexington Books (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Parts: A Study in Ontology

• Simons, Peter (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 408 Pages - 10/19/2000 (Publication Date) - Clarendon Press (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Mereology and Location

• Hardcover Book
• English (Publication Language)
• 282 Pages - 03/15/2014 (Publication Date) - Oxford University Press (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Foundations of the Theory of Parthood: A Study of Mereology (Trends in Logic (54))

• Hardcover Book
• Pietruszczak, Andrzej (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 308 Pages - 02/22/2020 (Publication Date) - Springer (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

 

Hylomorphism and Mereology (Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysic)

• Hardcover Book
• Gyula Klima, Alex Hall (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 125 Pages - 08/01/2018 (Publication Date) - Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Publisher)

Check Price on Amazon

Last update 2020-06-17. Price and product availability may change.