Mereology and truth-making

• Authors: Simons Peter
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Many mereological propositions are true contingently, so we are entitled to ask why they are true. One frequently given type of answer to such questions evokes truth-makers, that is, entities in virtue of whose existence the propositions in question are true. However, even without endorsing the extreme view that all contingent propositions have truth-makers, it turns out to be puzzlingly hard to provide intuitively convincing candidate truth-makers for even a core class of basic mereological propositions. Part of the problem is that the relation of part to whole is ontologically intimate in a way reminiscent of identity. Such intimacy bespeaks a formal or internal relation, which typically requires no truth-makers beyond its terms. But truth-makers are held to necessitate their truths, so whence the contingency when A is part of B but need not be, or B need not have A as part? This paper addresses and attempts to disentangle the conundrum.

Keywords

EN

mereology; mereological propositions; truth-makers; continuants

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)
• Journal: Logic and Logical Philosophy
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 3 Mereology and Beyond (II)
• Pages: 245-258

Dates

online

2015-10-29

Contributors

author

Simons Peter

• Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.12775/LLP.2015.020