Mereological nihilism
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Mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism, or what some philosophers just call nihilism) is the position that objects with parts do not exist (not only objects in space, but also objects existing in time do not have any temporal parts, and thus only exist in the present moment), and only basic building blocks without parts exist (e.g., electrons, quarks), and thus the world we see and experience full of objects with parts is a product of human misperception (if we could see clearly, we'd not see compositive objects).
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[edit] Explanation
Almost everyone knows what a part and a whole are; they are some of the first concepts that children or infants learn. A ball is made up of two halves, so the ball is a whole that is made up of two parts. Every single object we experience in the world outside of us and around us is a whole that has parts, and we never experience an object that does not have parts. For example, a tail is a part of a lion, a cloud is a part of the earth, and a molecule is a part of the DNA strand. The only things we know of that do not have parts are the smallest items known to exist, such as electrons, which can't be 'seen', so are not experienced—at least not directly. Thus all objects we experience have parts.
A number of philosophers have argued that objects that have parts do not exist. The basis of their argument consists in claiming that our senses give us only foggy information about reality and thus they cannot be trusted; and for example, we fail to see the smallest building blocks that make up anything (and that's a pretty important aspect of reality to not have any perception of), and these smallest building blocks are individual and separate items that do not ever unify or come together into being non-individual. Thus they never compose anything. So, according to the concept of mereological nihilism, if the building blocks of reality never compose any whole items, then all of reality does not involve any whole items, even though we may think it does.
[edit] Discussion
Mereological nihilism is the denial of what is called mereology, which is nicely defined by a contemporary philosopher named Achille Varzi:
“Mereology (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole. Its roots can be traced back to the early days of philosophy, beginning with the Presocratic atomists and continuing throughout the writings of Plato (especially the Parmenides and the Thaetetus), Aristotle (especially the Metaphysics, but also the Physics, the Topics, and De partibus animalium), and Boethius (especially In Ciceronis Topica).” (This citation is from the very beginning of his internet entry [1])
As can be seen from Varzi’s passage, mereology depends on the idea that there are metaphysical relations that connect part(s) to whole. And thus mereological nihilists maintain that such relations between part and whole do not exist, even though our senses might give us the impression that there are parts and wholes in reality and thus that such relations do exist.
[edit] Partial vs. Pure Nihilism
There are a few other philosophers who argue for what could be considered a partial nihilism, or what has been quasi-nihilism, which is the position that there is one type of object that has parts, namely, human persons, but there are no other objects with parts, and all other objects that we believe to be composite—chairs, trees, etc.—therefore do not exist. Rather, other than persons, which are composites (objects that have parts), there are only true atoms, or basic building blocks (which they call simples, such as found in physics research). The partial nihilists include Trenton Merricks of the University of Virginia [2], and Peter van Inwagen of Notre Dame[2]. It is debatable whether or not Merricks is a pure or quasi/partial nihilist, since he only admits minds. Also, Merricks might not be committed to the idea that chairs and trees, for example, do not exist. Rather, he might hold that they are particle systems, and thus they exist, and instead it is only our ordinary conception of them that is flawed, and need to be refined.
Partial nihilism is very different from pure mereological nihilism. For example, van Inwagen and other partial or impure nihilists, as they are called, maintain that our language and our sense information is not totally mistaken, even if partial nihilism is correct, and we can still talk about things like chairs and galaxies without being completely wrong. Partial nihilists claim that those items are really just particles arranged in a certain way, and thus when we say “chair”, we are not referring to one item, but rather we are referring to a collection or network of subatomic particles in a specific arrangement. This is very different from pure mereological nilihism, which is the claim that, as some ancient atomists would have argued, there are no objects with proper parts at all, and our language is therefore completely mistaken (for example, when I say “chair”, I refer to something that does not exist). One philosopher who has contended in favor of pure mereological nihilism is Peter Unger, in his papers "There Are No Ordinary Things," and "I Do Not Exist."
[edit] See also
- Nihilism
- Buddhist atomism
- Acosmism
- Presentism
- Simples
- Elementary particles
- Metaphysical nihilism
- Peter van Inwagen
- Trenton Merricks
