The Marriage of Mereology and Topology: A coherent theory of Ontology
$3.95
4 word format
document in english
humanities/philosophy
presentation
published 19/02/2008
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryIn the study of Ontology some peculiar issue arise out the study of entities and what make them up. The first thing that one notices is that there are parts of things and wholes that are the things which we view ontologically. This ontological status of parthood as relating to what the parts comprise had necessitated philosophers to devise a theory, a sub-theory of ontology, to account for this phenomenon. This sub-theory of the study of the relationship parts to wholes is called Mereology. Mereology goes back to the early Greeks, such as the atomists, who tried to account for how individual entities came together to make a distinct entity from themselves solely from the aggregation of the parts. Although the study of mereology was not coined at this time, it is often viewed as an early attempt to create a coherent theory of mereology, or the study of parts to wholes. What will be done in this paper is an overview of mereology and a mathematical theory called topology (the study of preserving the integrity of a shape even when it loses its original form) which is translated into ontology by two authors, Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi. These two authors contend that mereology, alone, is insufficient to account for the sustained identity of an entity by a mere appeal to the summation of its parts. This thesis of Casati and Varzi will be shown in concert with a background of the issues and debates surrounding mereology.
Table of Contents
- Mereology is an assumption about the relationship between simples, which make up a complex of a whole.
- One way that this had been done was by what is known as Extensional Mereology.
- Extensional mereology, prima facie, solves the problem of identity.
- Although closure mereology solves some of the problems that mereology creates, it obviously does not solve all of the problems.
Most downloaded documents over 30 days in humanities/philosophy Latest in the category humanities/philosophy From the same author
knowledge network