Katana VentraIP

Mereological nihilism

In philosophy, mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism) is the metaphysical thesis that there are no objects with proper parts. Equivalently, mereological nihilism says that mereological simples, or objects without any proper parts, are the only material objects that exist. Mereological nihilism is distinct from ordinary nihilism insofar as ordinary nihilism typically focuses on the nonexistence of common metaphysical assumptions such as ethical truths and objective meaning, rather than the nonexistence of composite objects.

Explanation[edit]

Our everyday perceptual experience suggests that we are surrounded by macrophysical objects that have other, smaller objects as their proper parts. For example, there seem to be such objects as tables, which appear to be composed of various other objects, such as the table-legs, a flat surface, and perhaps the nails or bolts holding those pieces together. Those latter objects, in turn, appear to be composed of still smaller objects. And so on. Indeed, every putative material object our perceptual faculties is capable of representing appear to be composed of smaller parts.


Mereological nihilists claim that there are no composite material objects. According to mereological nihilism, there are only fundamental physical simples arranged in various spatial patterns. For example, the mereological nihilist claims that, despite appearances to the contrary, there really are no tables. There are only fundamental physical simples spatially arranged and causally interrelated in such a way as to jointly cause perceptual faculties like ours to have table-like perceptual experiences. Nihilists often abbreviate claims like this one as follows: there are fundamental physical simples arranged table-wise. Ted Sider argued in a 2013 article that we should think of composition as arrangement.[1] According to Sider, when we say "there is a table", we mean there are mereological simples arranged table-wise.

Acosmism

Buddhist atomism

Divine simplicity

Elementary particles

Madhyamaka

Mereological essentialism

Metaphysical nihilism

Nihilism

Peter van Inwagen

Presentism

Reductionism

Simples

Trenton Merricks

at the Wayback Machine (archived September 1, 2006)

Review of Trenton Merricks' book

Review of van Inwagen's Material Beings