Parts
Parts

Author: Peter Simons

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780199241460

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The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, yet until now there has been no full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of such classical philosophical concepts as identity, individual, class, substance and accident, matter, form, essence, dependence, and integral whole. It also enables the author to offer new solutions to long-standing problems surrounding these concepts, such as the Ship of Theseus Problem and the issue of mereological essentialism. The author shows by his use of formal techniques that classical philosophical problems are amenable to rigorous treatment, and the book represents a synthesis of issues and methods from the analytical tradition and from the older continental realist tradition of Brentano and the early Husserl.

Parts
Parts

Author: Peter M. Simons

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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Showing that mereology is essential to ontology, Simons surveys and critiques previous theories of ontology and proposes a new account that encompasses both temporal and modal considerations.

Universality in Set Theories
Universality in Set Theories

Author: Manuel Bremer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 125

ISBN-13: 3110326108

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The book discusses the fate of universality and a universal set in several set theories. The book aims at a philosophical study of ontological and conceptual questions around set theory. Set theories are ontologies. They posit sets and claim that these exhibit the essential properties laid down in the set theoretical axioms. Collecting these postulated entities quantified over poses the problem of universality. Is the collection of the set theoretical entities itself a set theoretical entity? What does it mean if it is, and what does it mean if it is not? To answer these questions involves developing a theory of the universal set. We have to ask: Are there different aspects to universality in set theory, which stand in conflict to each other? May inconsistency be the price to pay to circumvent ineffability? And most importantly: How far can axiomatic ontology take us out of the problems around universality?

Ontology
Ontology

Author: Dale Jacquette

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1317489586

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The philosophical study of what exists and what it means for something to exist is one of the core concerns of metaphysics. This introduction to ontology provides readers with a comprehensive account of the central ideas of the subject of being. This book is divided into two parts. The first part explores questions of pure philosophical ontology: what is meant by the concept of being, why there exists something rather than nothing, and why there is only one logically contingent actual world. Dale Jacquette shows how logic provides the only possible answers to these fundamental problems. The second part of the book examines issues of applied scientific ontology. Jacquette offers a critical survey of some of the most influential traditional ontologies, such as the distinction between appearance and reality, and the categories of substance and transcendence. The ontology of physical entities - space, time, matter and causation - is examined as well as the ontology of abstract entities such as sets, numbers, properties, relations and propositions. The special problems posed by the subjectivity of mind and of postulating a god are also explored in detail. The final chapter examines the ontology of culture, language and art.

Idea and Ontology
Idea and Ontology

Author: Marc A. Hight

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0271047658

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"A wide-ranging study of the 'way of ideas' and its metaphysics, culminating in a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley."

Parts and Places
Parts and Places

Author: Roberto Casati

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9780262032667

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Thinking about space is thinking about spatial things. The table is on the carpet; hence the carpet is under the table. The vase is in the box; hence the box is not in the vase. But what does it mean for an object to be somewhere? How are objects tied to the space they occupy? In this book Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi address some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of spatial representation. Their starting point is an analysis of the interplay betwen mereology (the study of part/whole relations), topology (the study of spatial continuity and comapctness) and the theory of spatial location proper. This leads to a unified framework for spatial representation understood quite broadly as a theory of the representation of spatial entities. The framework is then tested against some classical metaphysical questions such as: Are parts essential to their whole? Is spatial co-location a sufficient criterion of identity? What (if anything) distinguishes material objects from events and other spatial entities? The concluding chapters deal with applications to topics as diverse as the logical analysis of movement and the semantics of maps.

Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction
Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction

Author: Giorgio Lando

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-06-29

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1472583671

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Parthood and composition are everywhere. The leg of a table is part of the table, the word "Christmas" is part of the sentence "I wish you a merry Christmas", the 13th century is part of the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg compose Benelux, the body of a deer is composed of a huge number of cells, the Middle Ages are composed of the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages. Is there really a general theory covering every instance of parthood and composition? Is classical mereology this general theory? Are its seemingly counter-intuitive features serious defects? Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction addresses the multifaceted and lively philosophical debates surrounding these questions, and defends the idea that classical mereology is indeed the general and exhaustive theory of parthood and composition in the domain of concrete entities. Several examples of parthood and composition, involving entities of different kinds, are scrutinised in depth. Incidentally, mereology is shown to interact in a surprising way with metaontology. Presenting a well-organized and comprehensive discussion of parthood and related notions, Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction contributes to a better understanding of a subject central to contemporary metaphysics.

Applied Ontology
Applied Ontology

Author: Katherine Munn

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 3110324865

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Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together. This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called ‘ontologies,’ for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare. Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another. They are often idiosyncratically structured, accessible only to those who created them, and unable to serve as inputs for automated reasoning. This volume shows, in a non-technical way and using examples from medicine and biology, how the rigorous application of theories and insights from philosophical ontology can improve the ontologies upon which information management depends.