Alexander Pruss's Blog

Van Inwagen thinks that a plurality of x s composes something if and only if either there is only one thing among the x s or the x s have a ...

Van Inwagen’s General Constitution Question (GCQ) is to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the x s to compose y in non-mereolo...

The Company axiom of mereology holds that an object cannot have only one proper part. This is a weaker version of the (Weak) Supplementation...

One of the old puzzles of Christology is why it is that in us the soul and body together compose a person, but they do not do so in Christ. ...

Consider this initially plausible thesis: If x has a proper part, and all of x ’s proper parts depend on y , then x depends on y . Add...

Some people, including myself, are concerned that plural quantification may be quantification over sets in logical clothing rather than a pu...

Assume naturalism about the human mind. Our best naturalistic account of the human mind is functionalism. But functionalism faces multiple t...

It would be appealing to be able to hold on to all of the following: Four-dimensionalism. Elementary particles are simples. There is onl...

A number of contemporary Aristotelians hold to the view that when a fundamental particle becomes or ceases to be a part of an organism, the ...

Van Inwagen famously raised the Special Composition Question (SCQ): What is an informative criterion for when a proper plurality of objects ...

In his famous “Mathematics is Megethology” , Lewis gives a brilliant reduction of set theory to mereology and plural quantification. A centr...

It is sometimes claimed that arbitrary mereological fusions and plural quantification are a metaphysical free lunch, just a new way of talki...

In an old post , I said that Goodman and Quine can’t define the concept of an infinite number of objects using their logical resources. All...

Here is a mildly interesting thing I just noticed: given dualism, we cannot say that we are a part of the Milky Way galaxy. For galaxies, if...

If a part of x has dignity, x has dignity. Only persons have dignity. So, a person cannot be a proper part of a non-person. (1–2) A pe...

In the previous post , I showed that Goodman and Quine’s counting method fails for objects that have too much overlap. I think (though the ...

Assume classical mereology. Then for any formula that has a satisfier, there is a fusion of all of its satisfiers. More precisely, if ϕ is ...

Plural quantification is meant to be a logical way of avoiding some technical and/or conceptual difficulties with sets and second-order quan...

According to Monism: (M) Necessarily if there are any concrete physical objects, then there is a concrete physical fundamental object (“a...

Assume this plausible principle: If a part x of z causes w , then z causes w . Add this controversial thesis: For any x and y , th...