Abstract

There are two main ways in which the notion of mereological fusion is usually defined in the current literature in mereology which have been labelled ‘Leśniewski fusion’ and ‘Goodman fusion’. It is well-known that, with Minimal Mereology as the background theory, every Leśniewski fusion also qualifies as a Goodman fusion. However, the converse does not hold unless stronger mereological principles are assumed. In this paper I will discuss how the gap between the two notions can be filled, focussing in particular on two specific sets of principles that appear to be of particular philosophical interest. The first way to make the two notions equivalent can be used to shed some interesting light on the kind of intuition both notions seem to articulate. The second shows the importance of a little-known mereological principle which I will call ‘Mild Supplementation’. As I will show, the mereology obtained by adding Mild Supplementation to Minimal Mereology occupies an interesting position in the landscape of theories that are stronger than Minimal Mereology but weaker than what Achille Varzi and Roberto Casati have labelled ‘Extensional Mereology’.

Highlights

  • The notion of mereological fusion is central to many debates in contemporary metaphysics

  • The mereological theory known in the literature as ‘Minimal Mereology’ ( ‘MM’) can be axiomatized by means of the following two principles— transitivity of proper parthood and Weak Supplementation: ð\-TransitivityÞ 8x8y8zððx\y ^ y\zÞ ! x\zÞ

  • (notice that MM entails that proper parthood is a strict partial order, and so it is transitive and irreflexive and asymmetric)

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Summary

Introduction

The notion of mereological fusion is central to many debates in contemporary metaphysics. G-mereologists appear to have an independent way to argue that in Fig. 1 a and b do contain each other, namely, by appealing to the idea that a fusion is ‘nothing over and above’ the plurality of its proper parts. This argument can be presented as follows:. It is a theorem of MM that parthood entails covering16: It is, straightforward to observe from the first conjuncts of (L-def?) and (Gdef?) that (assuming MM) if something is an L-fusion (of a certain plurality of entities) it is a G-fusion (of those entities): À. We have provided a seemingly intuitive explanation as to why that is the case, namely because (SSP) functions as a bridge principle between the two different notions of containment in play

Mild Supplementation and Extensionality
Between minimal mereology and extensional mereology
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