Composition, identity, and emergence

Journal Title: Logic and Logical Philosophy - Year 2016, Vol 25, Issue 3

Abstract

Composition as Identity (CAI) is the thesis that a whole is, strictly and literally, identical to its parts, considered collectively. McDaniel [2008] argues against CAI in that it prohibits emergent properties. Recently Sider [2014] exploited the resources of plural logic and extensional mereology to undermine McDaniel’s argument. He shows that CAI identifies extensionally equivalent pluralities – he calls it the Collapse Principle (CP) – and then shows how this identification rescues CAI from the emergentist argument. In this paper I first give a new generalized version of both the arguments. It is more general in that it does not presuppose an atomistic mereology. I then go on to argue that the consequences of CP are rather radical. It entails mereological nihilism, the view that there are only mereological atoms. I finally show that, given a mild assumption about property instantiation, namely that there are no un-instantiated properties, this argument entails that CAI and emergent properties are incompatible after all.

Authors and Affiliations

Claudio Calosi

Keywords

Related Articles

Composition, identity, and emergence

Composition as Identity (CAI) is the thesis that a whole is, strictly and literally, identical to its parts, considered collectively. McDaniel [2008] argues against CAI in that it prohibits emergent properties. Recently...

Can Başkent (ed.), Perspectives on Interrogative Models of Inquiry, Springer, 2016

Book Reviews: Can Başkent (ed.), Perspectives on Interrogative Models of Inquiry, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, Volume 8, Springer, 2016, vii + 197 pages, ISBN: 978-3-319-20761-2 (Print), 978-3-319-20762-9 (Online)....

The Case of Dialetheism

The concept of dialetheia and the claim of dialetheism has been examined and compared to such related concept as contradiction, antinomy, consistency and paraconsistency. Dialetheia is a true contradiction and dialetheis...

The Need for Pluralism of Causality

It will be shown in this article that a pluralism of causality is needed. Not only, as might be expected, for such different domains as natural sciences and humanities, but even within the domain of physics different cau...

Refutation Systems for a System of Nonsense-Logic

In the paper rejection systems for a system of nonsense-logic are investigated. The first rejection system consists of four rejected axioms and only one rejection rule - the rule of rejection by detachment. The second o...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP202188
  • DOI 10.12775/LLP.2016.010
  • Views 61
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Claudio Calosi (2016). Composition, identity, and emergence. Logic and Logical Philosophy, 25(3), 429-443. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-202188