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Logical Parts
Author(s) -
Paul L.A.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
noûs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.574
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1468-0068
pISSN - 0029-4624
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0068.00402
Subject(s) - library science , citation , computer science , information retrieval
In my office I have a large, comfortable red chair. This chair is a whole—an object composed of its parts. Applying mereological concepts to objects allows us to make sense of how objects in the world ~like chairs! that occupy a region of space are composed of many smaller objects that occupy subregions of the region. The objects that occupy these subregions are held to be proper parts of the chair as a whole. The approach allows us to understand many facts about the chair in terms of the objects that compose the chair, and to explain a number of seemingly contradictory claims we might want to make about it. We might say the chair is curved and flat, meaning that the part of the chair that is the armrest is curved and the part of the chair that is the seat is flat. We might say the chair is clean and dirty, meaning that the part of the chair that is the headrest is clean but the armrest where I placed my sandwich is dirty. Although I can pick out at least two different objects that have a left armrest as a proper part, an object that is my chair including the headrest and an object that is my chair excluding the headrest, I don’t think there are two distinct left armrests in my office, since the first object entirely overlaps the second. But what if we want to think of the chair in a different way? We can think of the chair as having many different spatial components, but we can also think of the chair as having many different qualitative components. The chair has armrests, a headrest, a back and a seat, but it also has the properties of being red, of being large, and being comfortable. The chair is the sum of its spatial components, but it might very well be that the chair is also the sum of its qualitative components. In other words, it makes sense to think of the chair as composed of many smaller ~and partly overlapping ! objects that are spatial parts of the chair. Why not also think of the chair as being made up of many smaller ~and partly overlapping ! objects that are qualitative parts of the chair? Indeed, NOÛS 36:4~2002! 578–596