Mereological Fallacy Research Articles

“Early Christian Communism”: Russian Church Journalism in the Latter Half of XIX — Early XX Century About the Phenomenon of the Jerusalem Community

The article considers and analyzes the views of Russian church authors in the latter half of XIX – early XX century (orthodox clergy, scholars, teachers of theological schools) toward the phenomenon of the Jerusalem community and the attempts of supporters of socialist views to treat the patterns of life and thought of Jerusalem Christians as an “early Christian”, “apostolic” or “ancient Christian” communism. Through the example of the critical scrutiny by church authors of the book “The Acts of the Apostles”, the paper shows their interpretations of property relations established in the Jerusalem community, reasons of its unique character, exegesis of the fall of Ananias and Sapphire, as well as fundamental differences of life of first Christians from the communist ideal. It testifies that notwithstanding the insignificant disparity of valuations concerning the Jerusalem community, its experience, achievements and period of existence, church authors had an undivided opinion in terms of disagreement with the fallacy of division between property relations of the community with those proclaimed by ideologists of socialism and communism.

The Water–Economy Nexus of Beef Produced from Different Cattle Breeds

The sustainable use of water, or any other natural resource for that matter, is not the only factor that should be considered in terms of sustainability, as social equity and economic prosperity are equally important. The objective of this study was to analyse different breeds of beef cattle, following the same production method, in terms of their water footprint and economic value addition for different links in the value chain. A bottom-up approach was applied to identify the breed with the best economic water consumption in terms of beef production. The results indicated that the total WF/kg carcass revealed notable differences between the various breeds. The Bonsmara had the smallest WF/kg carcass, while the Limousin had the largest. The WF/kg of beef for the different cuts (rib eye, topside, and flank) showed large variations between the breeds and between the different cuts of beef from the same breed. In terms of the economic water consumption, the Angus consumed between 4% and 25% less water per rand of economic value addition than the Bonsmara, Simmentaler, Simbra, Limousin, Afrikaner, and Brahman. When the economic water consumption of the individual value links was considered, it was found that Bonsmara had the best figures for cow–calf production, while the Limousin and Simmentaler were the best in terms of feedlot finishing and processing, respectively. These contradicting results showed the importance of a bottom-up approach to ensure that the fallacy of division does not occur and, secondly, that possible problem areas in the value chain are identified and addressed separately.

Why the Readiness Potential Does Not Disprove Free Will

Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet has conducted a series of experiments that reveal the existence of certain neural processes in the brain of human subjects, initiating an action prior to the human subject’s intention to act, thus seemingly threatening our idea of free will. The purpose of this paper is to show how these processes do not disprove any idea of free will one might have as one would, if accepting such a thesis, be committing two distinct mereological fallacies and ultimately, would treat the human subject as inhabiting some of its parts as opposed to being the sum of its parts.

Why the Readiness Potential Does Not Disprove Free Will

Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet has conducted a series of experiments that reveal the existence of certain neural processes in the brain of human subjects, initiating an action prior to the human subject’s intention to act, thus seemingly threatening our idea of free will. The purpose of this paper is to show how these processes do not disprove any idea of free will one might have as one would, if accepting such a thesis, be committing two distinct mereological fallacies and ultimately, would treat the human subject as inhabiting some of its parts as opposed to being the sum of its parts.

Minds, Brains, and Capacities: Situated Cognition and Neo-Aristotelianism.

This article compares situated cognition to contemporary Neo-Aristotelian approaches to the mind. The article distinguishes two components in this paradigm: an Aristotelian essentialism which is alien to situated cognition and a Wittgensteinian “capacity approach” to the mind which is not just congenial to it but provides important conceptual and argumentative resources in defending social cognition against orthodox cognitive (neuro-)science. It focuses on a central tenet of that orthodoxy. According to what I call “encephalocentrism,” cognition is primarily or even exclusively a computational process occurring inside the brain. Neo-Aristotelians accuse this claim of committing a “homuncular” (Kenny) or “mereological fallacy” (Bennett and Hacker). The article explains why the label “fallacy” is misleading, reconstructs the argument to the effect that encephalocentric applications of psychological predicates to the brain and its parts amount to a category mistake, and defends this argument against objections by Dennett, Searle, and Figdor. At the same time it criticizes the Neo-Aristotelian denial that the brain is the organ of cognition. It ends by suggesting ways in which the capacity approach and situated cognition might be combined to provide a realistic and ecologically sound picture of cognition as a suite of powers that flesh-and-blood animals exercise within their physical and social environments.

Neuroscience and the Northern Ireland Curriculum: 2020, and the warning signs remain

ABSTRACT In recent years, neuroscience and brain-based approaches to education have started to feature prominently in the rationale for radical educational reform, both in terms of policy and practice. Revelations about what way the brain works, it seems, is a common point of interest for neuroscience and education alike. Out of these common interests there are now entire disciplines in their own right, such as ‘mind, brain and education’ and ‘neuroeducation’, which are collaborative disciplines formed at the boundaries of common points of interest between the brain sciences in general and education. This paper seeks to examine the credibility of the science inherent in this collaboration, with a particular example found in the guise of the Revised Northern Ireland Curriculum, devised and implemented from 2003 onwards by the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA). The paper will also invoke a philosophical notion known as the mereological fallacy, to offer a conceptual critique of the curricular changes in Northern Ireland.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

The use of psychological concepts in cognitive neuroscience is heavily criticized by Bennett & Hacker's Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. The central objection points to neuroscience's attribution to the brain of psychological concepts that are meaningful only when applied to the entire being. That is supposedly the case of “seeing,” “communicating,” and “reading.” Bennett & Hacker identify in such attributions what they call a mereological fallacy. The critical revision of Bennett & Hacker's argument is an opportunity to present the debate about philosophy and psychological neuroscience and outline a Wittgensteinian perspective about the meaning of psychological concepts, its interest, and its relevance to scientific research.

Learning to drive: A reconceptualization

Drivers’ population-level crash rates incrementally decrease following licensure, which has led to the implicit assumption that an individual driver’s crash risk also decreases incrementally after licensure as they accrue experience. However, in the aggregate data an incremental decrease in crash rate can reflect both incremental reductions in crash risk within individuals and an incremental increase in the proportion of drivers who have experienced an abrupt decrease in crash risk. Therefore, while it is true to say that the population of drivers’ crash risk reduces in the months following licensure, it is not necessarily true to say that a driver’s crash risk reduces in the months following licensure; that is, it cannot be assumed that individual-level changes in crash risk mirror the population-level changes in crash rates. In statistics, this is known as an ecological fallacy and in formal logic it is known as the fallacy of division, a type of category error. Using computational cognitive modeling methods we demonstrate that aggregating individual-level abrupt decreases in crash risk (i.e., non-incremental change trajectories) accurately fits population-level crash rate data from over 1 million novice drivers and uniquely accounts for effects of two interventions found to reduce police-reported MVCs. Thus, we demonstrate that: (1) a power-law artifact is readily observable in newly licensed drivers’ aggregate crash data, which is not necessarily indicative of individual-level change processes, (2) interventions can alter crash risk trajectories by inducing immediate phase changes in crash risk into a lower risk stratum, or increasing the probability of such a change, and (3) a phase transition model provides a stronger and more parsimonious account of the existing data than an incremental-accrual model.

The concept of (depth) cues: An exemplification of homuncular language in vision science

The term “depth cue” is fundamental to and widely used in vision science. However, despite the prevalence and importance of that concept, there is virtually no study on its theoretical foundations and coherence. This article aims at filling that gap by investigating both its historical development and its current use within the predominant computational approach to vision. Against the backdrop of Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach to philosophy, it is shown that both traditional and current characterizations of depth cues suffer from a serious logical flaw known as “homunculus” or “mereological fallacy.” It is suggested that the problem of homuncular language impedes critical thinking and theorizing in vision science since it obscures the matters at issue by disguising explanatorily empty expressions as explanatory hypotheses. Furthermore, it is argued that homuncular language is not confined to the concept of depth cues but typical of current cognitive science in general since it is linked to its most fundamental assumption of the brain being an information processing system. In conclusion, resulting implications for cognitive science and cognitive scientists are considered.

On the Thinking Brains and Tinkering with the Scientific Models

The paper aims to provide a detailed assessment of Tim Crane’s recent invocation of the notion of scientific models in the way of dealing with the issue of the brain’s representational states. In this paper, I assess Crane’s proposal under a charitable and a less charitable reading. I argue that Crane’s use of scientific models is at best (i.e. under a charitable reading) compatible with his expression of psychological realism. However, Crane’s use of model-based strategy by no means underlay, support, or strengthen his psychological realism. Rather, traditional reasons from the metaphysics of mind, acting quite separately from empirical scientific reasons, must be used to support this realism, and Crane has merely removed the threat posed to these metaphysical arguments by the existence of the so-called mereological fallacy in empirical neuroscience. Therefore, while he has saved the neuroscientific language from philosophical attack, he has perhaps even strengthened the divide between neuroscience and philosophy. I conclude the paper by outlining the sketch of a broadbrush scientifically informed strategy for defending psychological realism.

Hybrid psychology as a human science

Resolving some major philosophical errors in relating behaviour to brain structures and processes can provide a firm foundation for a hybrid science that gives equal weight to both meaning making (Cultural Psychology) and brain activity (Neuroscience). Neuroscientists, however, still fall for two mereological fallacies: the first involving their use of predicates and the second in the projection onto a whole of products of interactions with whole people and it is a fallacy to project them back into that person as constituents. While brains are parts of human bodies it is not clear that they are parts of persons. Clarification is then sought through the identification of four “grammars” linked by three specific principles. Finally, arguments are developed to show that objections to the idea that brains and their constituent organs are tools are misplaced.

The person as the nexus of patterns of discursive practices

In this paper, I examine four roots of conversational practices that are particularly germane to the understanding how the uses of the word ‘person’ as displays of the concept of person are both products and producers of the intelligibility of such practices. These roots are empirical facts used as if they were necessary truths – Wittgenstein’s ‘hinges’; the resolutions of relevant mereological fallacies; the grammar of indexical expressions, particularly pronouns; ad finally positioning theory, the study of the conversational devices by means of which rights and duties are distributed among the members of a population of human beings.

The philosophical–anthropological foundations of Bennett and Hacker’s critique of neuroscience

Bennett and Hacker criticize a number of neuroscientists and philosophers for attributing capacities which belong to the human being as a whole, like perceiving or deciding, to a “part” of the human being, viz. the brain. They call this type of mistake the “mereological fallacy”. Interestingly, the authors say that these capacities cannot be ascribed to the mind either. They reject not only materialistic monism but also Cartesian dualism, arguing that many predicates describing human life do not refer to physical or mental properties, nor to the sum of such properties. I agree with this important principle and with the critique of the mereological fallacy which it underpins, but I have two objections to the authors’ view. Firstly, I think that the brain is not literally a part of the human being, as suggested. Secondly, Bennett and Hacker do not offer an account of body and mind which explains in a systematic way how the domain of phenomena which transcends the mental and the physical relates to the mental and the physical. I first argue that Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology provides the kind of account we need. Then, drawing on Plessner, I present an alternative view of the mereological relationships between brain and human being. My criticism does not undercut Bennett and Hacker’s diagnosis of the mereological fallacy but rather gives it a more solid philosophical–anthropological foundation.

The fallacy of composition: Guiding concepts, historical cases, and research problems

Although the fallacy of composition is little studied by theorists and trivially illustrated in textbooks, some view it as ubiquitous and highly significant. Furthermore, although definitions regard the concept as unproblematic, it contains three distinct elements that are often confused, and is often carelessly conflated with the fallacy of division. And although some apparently claim that fallacies are figments of a critic's imagination, they are really proposing to study fallacies in the context of meta-argumentation. Guided by these ideas, I find three important historical examples: Aristotle's geocentric argument from natural motion, as critiqued by Galileo; a step in the theological argument from design, as critiqued by Hume; and Michels's iron law of oligarchy, as critiqued by social scientists Dahl and Lipset. Finally, I formulate some problems for future research on compositional arguments: distinguishing incorrectness from fallaciousness; elaborating general principles of evaluation; clarifying the three distinct subtypes; shifting from the arbitrary pluralism of argument-identification to the normal meta-argumentation of argument-analysis; and further historical–empirical search for such fallacies in various controversies, over holism, over global warming, and over national debts.

Homunculi, the mereological fallacy and crypto-dualism. Two dilemmas for the intentional stance

Neuroscientist Maxwell Bennett and philosopher Peter Hacker defend the need to eradicate the mereological fallacy of cognitive neuroscience. This fallacy attributes to the parts of an animal psychological predicates that make sense only when applied to the whole animal. In contrast, philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that it is possible to explain behavior and cognitive abilities by applying the Intentional Stance (IS) to the brain, a stance that attributes increasingly simple psychological capacities to increasingly less intelligent homunculi. So, among other things, taking the intentional stance requires i) attributing psychological predicates to the brain and its parts, and ii) gradually replacing psychological predicates with non-psychological predicates.If the criticism of Bennett and Hacker is accepted, these requirements lead to two dilemmas. According to the first, the intentional stance would be inapplicable or fallacious: because (i) it implies incurring in the mereological fallacy, and to deny (i) is equivalent to rejecting the intentional stance. The horns of the second dilemma are dualism and explanatory vacuity: (ii) can be interpreted in a dualistic sense because it presupposes the distinction between psychological and non-psychological predicates; however, failing to respect (ii) generates an infinite regress.In this article I intend to show that both dilemmas are resolved by focusing on the details of the relationship between the intentional stance and the design stance.

Seven Misconceptions About the Mereological Fallacy: A Compilation for the Perplexed

If someone commits the mereological fallacy, then he ascribes psychological predicates to parts of an animal that apply only to the (behaving) animal as a whole. This incoherence is not strictly speaking a fallacy, i.e. an invalid argument, since it is not an argument but an illicit predication. However, it leads to invalid inferences and arguments, and so can loosely be called a fallacy. However, discussions of this particular illicit predication, the mereological fallacy, show that it is often misunderstood. Many misunderstandings concern the use of this illicit predication in the course of discussions of understanding the mind/body problem. Our aim here is to provide an accessible overview through discussing common misconceptions of the fallacy. We also discuss how conceptual investigations of the relation between living organisms and their parts fit within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, i.e. inclusive fitness theory.

Molecules and mereology

This paper widens the scope of our previous paper (Harre and Llored in Found Chem 13:63–76, 2011) by scrutinizing how whole/parts relations are involved in the study of molecules. In doing so, we point out two mereological fallacies which endanger both philosophical and chemical inferences. We also further explore how the concept of affordance is related to our mereological investigation. We then refer to quantum chemistry in order to pave the way for a new mereological approach for chemistry.

Enactivism is not interactionism

Enactivism is not interactionism

Reply to commentaries on “Consciousness, crosstalk and the mereological fallacy: An evolutionary perspective”

Reply to commentaries on “Consciousness, crosstalk and the mereological fallacy: An evolutionary perspective”

Biased competition in the global workspace: Comment on “Consciousness, crosstalk and the mereological fallacy: An evolutionary perspective” by R. Wallace

Biased competition in the global workspace: Comment on “Consciousness, crosstalk and the mereological fallacy: An evolutionary perspective” by R. Wallace