On the Overlap Between Everything and Nothing

Massimiliano Carrara; Filippo Mancini; Jeroen Smid

doi:10.12775/LLP.2021.013

Authors

Massimiliano Carrara FISPPA Department, University of Padua https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3509-1585
Filippo Mancini FISPPA Department, University of Padua
Jeroen Smid Department of Philosophy, Institute of Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2621-1562

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12775/LLP.2021.013

Keywords

mereology, Graham Priest, everything, nothing, paraconsistency

Abstract

Graham Priest has recently proposed a solution to the problem of the One and the Many which involves inconsistent objects and a non-transitive identity relation. We show that his solution entails either that the object everything is identical with the object nothing or that they are mutual parts; depending on whether Priest goes for an extensional or a non-extensional mereology.

References

Calosi, C., 2016, “Composition as identity and mereological nihilism”, The Philosophical Quarterly 66 (263): 219–235. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqv109

Carrara, M., and G. Lando, 2021, “Mereology and identity”, Synthese 198 (18): 4205–4227. URL "https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02592-5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02592-5

Casati, F., and N. Fujikawa, 2014, “Review of Graham Priest, One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness”, Logic and Logical Philosophy 23 (4): 499–508. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12775/LLP.2014.013

Casati, F., and N. Fujikawa, 2019, “Nothingness, meinongianism and inconsistent mereology”, Synthese 196 (9): 3739–3772. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1619-1

Cotnoir, A. J., 2018, “A note on Priest’s mereology”, The Australasian Journal of Logic 15 (4): 642–645. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26686/ajl.v15i4.4832

Lando, G., 2017, Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction, Bloomsbury Press.

Loss, R., 2018, “A sudden collapse to nihilism”, The Philosophical Quarterly 68 (271): 370–375. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqx012

Priest, G., 2002, “Paraconsistent logic”, pages 287–393 in Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Springer.

Priest, G., 2006, In Contradiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263301.001.0001

Priest, G., 2014a, “Much ado about nothing”, The Australasian Journal of Logic 11 (2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.26686/ajl.v11i2.2144

Priest, G., 2014b, One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness, Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199688258.001.0001

Priest, G., 2016, Towards Non-Being: The Logic and Metaphysics of Intentionality, Oxford:

Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198783596.001.0001

Priest, G., 2017, “Entangled gluons: Replies to Casati, Han, Kim, and Yagisawa”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25 (4): 560–568. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2017.1352271

Priest, G., F. Berto, and Z. Weber, 2018, “Dialetheism”, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, fall 2018 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/

Sgaravatti, D., and G. Spolaore, 2018, “Out of nothing”, Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 7 (2): 132–138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/tht3.274

Sider, T., 2007, “Parthood”, The Philosophical Review 116 (1): 51–91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2006-022

Sider, T., 2014, “Consequences of collapse”, chapter 11 in A. J. Cotnoir and D. L. M. Baxter (eds.), Composition as Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669615.003.0011

Varzi, A., 2019, “Mereology”, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, spring 2019 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

Yagisawa, T., 2017, “Gluons of different colors”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25 (4): 555–559. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2017.1352267

Zolghadr, B., 2019, “Being and nothingness”, The Australasian Journal of Logic 16 (3): 68–82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26686/ajl.v16i3.4075