An Extensional Mereology for Structured Entities
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An Extensional Mereology for Structured Entities Ilaria Canavotto1 · Alessandro Giordani2 Received: 11 October 2019 / Accepted: 27 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract 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.
1 Introduction In Metaphysics Z 17 Aristotle introduces a primitive distinction between concrete heaplike composites, like a bunch of bricks or a pile of sand, and concrete non-heaplike composites, like a house or a clay pot. This distinction is based on the intuitive judgment that, although the entities in the two groups have parts, and so are
* Ilaria Canavotto [email protected] Alessandro Giordani [email protected] 1
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2
Department of Philosophy, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy
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composite, they differ both in the way in which they are unified and in the way in which they can be composed and decomposed. To illustrate, consider the entities depicted in Fig. 1.1 Hardly anyone would take it as problematic to classify what we see in Fig. 1a as a puzzle and what we see in Fig. 1b as a bunch of puzzle pieces. In addition, most of us would certainly be prepared to claim that both the puzzle and the bunch of pieces have parts, even if the pieces in the puzzle, unlike those in the bunch, are unified in an appropriate way, partly dependent on the form of the pieces. We would also typically classify what we see in Fig. 2a as a complete puzzle and what we see in Fig. 2b as a puzzle lacking a piece.2 But it would strike us as odd that a bunch of puzzle pieces can lack a piece: we would typically classify what we obtain by removing one of the pieces in a bunch as a new bunch rather than as an incomplete bunch. Hence, while a puzzle can be decomposed in such a way that it makes sense to say that it is no more a complete puzzle, a bunch of puzzle pieces is different in this respect. Finally, in order to produce a puzzle, the pieces need to be assembled in a speci
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