Against mereological nihilism

Against mereological nihilism

I argue that mereological nihilism fails because it cannot answer (what I describe as) the special arrangement question: when is it true that the xs (the mereological simples) are arranged F-wise? I suggest that the answers given in the literature fail and that the obvious responses that could be made look to undermine the motivations for adopting nihilism in the first place.

Mereological nihilism and the special arrangement question

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects – objects with proper parts – do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “x s arranged F-wise” (for example, while nihilists deny that there are tables, they concede that there are “x s arranged table-wise”). Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insof...

Mereological Essentialism and Mereological Inessentialism

Mereological essentialists argue that mereological summations cannot change their parts. Mereological inessentialists argue that mereological summations can change some or all of their parts. In this paper I articulate and defend a position called Moderate Mereological Inessentialism, according to which certain mereological summations can change some, but not all, of their parts. Persistent mer...

Logical Nihilism

Madhyamaka is Not Nihilism

Introduction Nāgārjuna (c. 200 CE) is the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, and easily, after the Buddha himself, the most influential philosopher in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. Despite the great consensus on his philosophical and doctrinal importance, there is little consensus, either in the canonical Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature of India, Tibet and East Asi...