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<p>There is a widespread intuition that mereology should be ontologically innocent. In this paper, we compare two attempts to deliver this innocence. They both identify a fusion with the plurality of its parts, but they disagree over the logical status of the fusion: according to <i>Composition as Identity</i> (CAI), the fusion is a genuine individual, and in this sense it is both <i>one</i> and <i>many</i>; according to <i>manyism</i>, the fusion is not an individual, and so is <i>merely many</i>. We argue that no version of CAI can make mereology ontologically innocent without violating some independently attractive desiderata. But manyism can. In fact, when the details are appropriately filled out, manyism yields (what we call) <i>mereologicism</i>, the result that all of the axioms of Classical Mereology are logical theorems. Given manyism, mereology is innocent because logic is.</p>

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Manyism as mereologicism

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年8月13日

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  • Robert Trueman,
  • Simon Thunder

摘要

There is a widespread intuition that mereology should be ontologically innocent. In this paper, we compare two attempts to deliver this innocence. They both identify a fusion with the plurality of its parts, but they disagree over the logical status of the fusion: according to Composition as Identity (CAI), the fusion is a genuine individual, and in this sense it is both one and many; according to manyism, the fusion is not an individual, and so is merely many. We argue that no version of CAI can make mereology ontologically innocent without violating some independently attractive desiderata. But manyism can. In fact, when the details are appropriately filled out, manyism yields (what we call) mereologicism, the result that all of the axioms of Classical Mereology are logical theorems. Given manyism, mereology is innocent because logic is.