why isn't everyone a mereological nihilist

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[–]neolib 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

In philosophy, mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism) is the metaphysical thesis that there are no objects with proper parts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mereological_nihilism

[–]PragmaticStoicism 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Sounds like complete gibberish to me. The premise seems to be that everything that is something is actually not something but some other thing that we perceive as something.

This is a type of convoluted logic that is very common, but comes in different flavors. It is a type of semantic game that bogs down in soft concepts that are hard to disprove, especially for those who are not scientifically literate.

I am confident that reality exist outside of my perception and any claim that how we percieve things with our senses determines the nature of reality is nothing more than nonsense.

[–]neolib 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The whole mereology field seems to be quite esoteric to me, but I'll admit I didn't look into it closely.

In logic, philosophy and related fields, mereology (from Greek μέρος 'part' (root: μερε-, mere-, 'part') and the suffix -logy, 'study, discussion, science') is the study of parts and the wholes they form. Whereas set theory is founded on the membership relation between a set and its elements, mereology emphasizes the meronomic relation between entities, which—from a set-theoretic perspective—is closer to the concept of inclusion between sets.

[–]PragmaticStoicism 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sounds like a better explanation is to say that metrology is the study of what similarities there are between different things. Rather than putting things into categories and ignoring the similarities of things in different groups, meteology rejects categories and only looks for those things which are the same.

That is the most logic I can make of what is at best a poorly considered analytical style.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]PragmaticStoicism 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    The question would be how do you justify that "objects with parts" actually exist,

    A leg carries a body. Without a body the leg can't function. Without the leg the body can't walk. Obviously objects with parts exist as I just described an object with parts. Obviously the objects are individually different as they have different functions such that two bodies without legs can't walk, even when connected. Obviously the composite is different than a sum if the parts as it can perform a function as a whole that none of the parts can perform separately.

    It is absurd to claim that there is no such thing as "objects with parts".

    Who is to say that a soul does not have parts?