Beyond atomism

Aaron Cotnoir

doi:10.1002/tht3.64

Beyond atomism

Aaron Cotnoir

Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Contemporary metaphysicians have been drawn to a certain attractive picture of the structure of the world. This picture consists in classical mereology, the priority of parts over wholes, and the well-foundedness of metaphysical priority. In this short note, I show that this combination of theses entails superatomism, which is a significant strengthening of mereological atomism. This commitment has been missed in the literature due to certain sorts of models of mereology being
overlooked. But the entailment is an important one: we must either accept superatomism or reject one (or other) of the most widespread theses of contemporary metaphysics.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	67-72
Number of pages	6
Journal	Thought: A Journal of Philosophy
Volume	2
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/tht3.64
Publication status	Published - Mar 2013

Keywords

Ontology
Dependence
Priority
Grounding
Mereology
Parthood
Well-foundedness
Atomism
Gunk
Monism

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10.1002/tht3.64

Beyond Atomism
© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc and the Northern Institute of Philosophy. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Cotnoir, A. J. (2013), Beyond Atomism. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 2: 67–72, which has been published in final form at https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/tht3.64. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving
Accepted author manuscript, 58.4 KB

Cite this

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KW - Priority

KW - Grounding

KW - Mereology

KW - Parthood

KW - Well-foundedness

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KW - Gunk

KW - Monism

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Beyond atomism

Abstract

Keywords

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