Mereological essentialism
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Mereological essentialism is the view that objects have their parts essentially. If mereological essentialism is true, it would have the consequence that if an object would lose or gain a part, it would cease to exist (that is, the result would not be the same object anymore). That means that mereological essentialism is a philosophical thesis about the relationship between wholes and its parts, and the conditions for their persistence.
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[edit] Stating mereological essentialism more precisely
The above statement of mereological essentialism is vague in several ways. First, what types of objects? Are we talking about abstract or concrete objects? It is most common to take mereological essentialism as a thesis about concrete material objects. But there is no restriction to consider it, for instance, true of a set or proposition. A proposition, or thought, if mereological essentialism is true, has its parts essentially; the concepts that make up the proposition are essential to it.
Second, mereological essentialism can be true of two types of material objects, depending on how they persist through time, endurantism and perdurantism. Mereological essentialism for enduring objects - objects that persist by being wholly present every instant, means that the enduring objects only have their spatial parts essentially. Mereological essentialism for perduring objects - objects that are spread out with parts both in space and time, have also their temporal parts essentially.
Third, what does it mean to have something essentially? The usual way to spell out essentiality is by necessity or possible worlds. Mereological essentialism is then the thesis that objects have their parts necessarily or objects have their parts in every possible world, in which the object exists.
[edit] Contenders to Mereological essentialism
Mereological essentialism is a position defended in the debate regarding material constitution. What is the relationship between, for instance, a statue and the lump of clay of which it is made. Several different answers are proposed. Take coincidentialism, the view that there are two objects located at the same place. The lump of clay should be distinguished from the statue because they have different persistence conditions. The lump would not survive the loss of a very small part of clay, but the statue would. The statue would not survive being squashed into a ball, but the lump of clay would.
[edit] Philosophers that defend Mereological essentialism
The following philosophers have thought mereological essentialism to be true; before the 20th century, Peter Abelard and Gottfried Leibniz. In the 20th century, we have, G.E. Moore, Roderick Chisholm and James Van Cleve. The last two consider objects as enduring. Michael Jubien and Mark Heller defend mereological essentialism for perduring objects, in the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.
[edit] Arguments for Mereological essentialism
There are several argument for mereological essentialism. Some are more formal and others take mereological essentialism as solutions to philosophical puzzles or paradoxes. (This approach is, for instance, mentioned in Olson (2006).)
[edit] The Argument from Bad Alternatives
What would be the opposite of mereological essentialism. It would be that objects would survive the loss of any part, call it mereological inessentialism. But mereological inessentialism means that a table would survive replacement or loss of any of its parts. By successive replacement we could change the parts of the table so in the end it would look like a chair. This is a version of a sorites paradox. Because it is hard to find a middle place to stop at, the best way could be to defend mereological essentialism. (Chisholm 1973.)
[edit] "Deon and Theon" argument
Take the person called Deon. He has a proper part, his foot. One day he loses his foot. He is then known as Theon. But it seems that Theon existed when Deon existed, being a proper part of Deon—namely the complement of Deon's foot, Deon minus his foot. Did Deon survive? If he did, Deon and Theon are identical and Theon is a proper part of Deon.
One way to solve this puzzle is to deny that Deon has any proper parts. Defending this view is rejecting the principle of arbitrary undetached parts (Van Inwagen 1981). It means that a cup in front of you doesn't have a left part, a right part, a part where the ear of the cup is or a part where the coffee is stored (if the hole of the cup is a part of the cup).
[edit] A World made only of Stuff
Some philosophers reject the existence of individual objects. The world does not contain single, individuable objects that we can use logic to quantify over. Instead the world only contains stuff or masses of matter. Masses of matter come in different quantities. We have for instance a gram of gold. There is a grammatical difference between stuff and things. We can't say, take a gold, but must say a lump of gold (Simons 1987). Our standard way of quantifying is at most a way for the mind to project thinghood onto the world. If the world is made only of stuff, mereoligical essentialism must be true.
The argument from a world made only of stuff was first noted by van Cleve (1986). Defenders of a stuff ontology are Michael Jubien (1993) and Mark Heller (1990).
[edit] Arguments against Mereological essentialism
Because mereology is such a new branch of formal systems clear arguments against mereological essentialism have not yet been raised. The most common counterargument is that mereological essentialism entails that an object which undergoes a subtle change is not the same object. This seems to be directly contrary to common sense. For example, if my car gets a flat tire and I then replace the tire, mereological essentialism entails that it is not the same car and to most people that seems just plain wrong.
[edit] The argument from a paradigmatic example
The most common argument against mereological essentialism is the view that it can't be universally true. Take us, ourself, persons. We are humans, living organisms. As organisms we survive by having our parts replaced, by, for instance, metabolism or organ transplantation. Or as humans we might have our hair or fingernails cut. All of these procedures don't seem to lead to the nonexistence of the person or for that matter the nonexistence of the living organism. Therefore mereological essentialism can't be universally true (Plantinga 1975).
Although, if the mereological essentialist also believes in presentism, then this argument might fail to convince them. A person who believes in presentism believes that the present is the only relevantly true world. This view is a response to the problem of Qualitative Change.
[edit] References
- Chisholm, Roderick, 1973, “Parts as Essential to Their Wholes”, Review of Metaphysics, 26:581-603.
- Chisholm, Roderick, 1975, “Mereological Essentialism: Further Considerations”, Review of Metaphysics, 28:477-84.
- Chisholm, Roderick, 1979, “Persons and Objects, A Metaphysical Study”. Open Court.
- Heller, Mark, 1990, The Ontology of Physical Objects: Four-dimensional hunks of matter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Jubien, Michael, 1993, Ontology, Modality, and Fallacy of Reference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Olson, Eric, 2006, "The Paradox of Increase", The Monist 89:3.
- Plantinga, Alvin, 1975, “On mereological essentialism”, Review of Metaphysics, 28:468-76.
- Simons, Peter, 1987. Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford Univ. Press.
- van Cleve, James, 1986, ”Mereological Essentialism, Mereological Conjunctivism and Identity Through Time”, i P. French, T. Uehling och H. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy, xi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.)
- van Inwagen, P., 1981, “The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 62:123-37.
