Mereology in Metaphysics, Science and Logic

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Philosophies is devoted to mereology in metaphysics, science, and logic. Mereology is the study of part/whole relations, composition, and decomposition, etc. Mereology has played a significant role in contemporary metaphysics and some work has focused on the nature of relevant relations. Under what conditions do some several things compose a further thing? Under what conditions is a thing composite (i.e., have parts)? Under what conditions is a thing simple (i.e., fail to have any parts)? Some of the work has focused on how the parts that compose a whole are related to space, time, and possibility. Hence, mereology has been connected to extension, persistence, and modality. Further, some work has focused on the kinds of parts had by ordinary objects. For example, whether objects are neo-Aristotelian or hylomorphic compounds that contain their form as a part, or whether objects have their boundaries as parts (topology). Some of these debates have garnered skepticism about whether opposing views are really in opposition to one another. Hence, work in meta-metaphysics has crept into mereological debates (for example, quantifier variance). More recent work in the philosophy of science has investigated whether work in physics, chemistry, biology, or even computer science might have mereological entailments. For example, one might wonder whether quantum indeterminacy entails anything about parthood, location, motion, and even existence. Mereology has even been thought to be related to set theory and hence to the foundations of mathematics. Additionally, there has been extensive work on the logic of parthood. Is parthood a partial ordering? What kinds of composition and decomposition principles, if any, should be included in the logic of parthood? And should the logic of parthood be a fuzzy logic? Current work in mereology outstrips the areas noted above and I hope that future work will push the boundaries even further. I would like to invite potential contributors to submit papers in any area of mereology (broadly construed).

Dr. Joshua Spencer
Guest Editor

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• mereology
• parts and composition
• simples
• persistence and spacetime
• modality
• indeterminacy
• foundations of mathematics
• neo-Aristotelianism or hylomorphism
• meta-metaphysics
• quantifier variance