The Structure of the World Emily Thomas (CERSS)

What is philosophy?

What is philosophy?

‘The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.’ (Russell, 1918)

Philosophy can be defined by...

1) Aims to produce a theoretical understanding of

mankind and the world

2) Method ‘armchair investigation’

What is philosophy?

Philosophy

Ethics Political philosophy

Philosophy of

language

Epistemology Logic Metap

hysics

3) Subject matter• general and fundamental questions about existence

What is metaphysics?

‘Metaphysics involves intuitive knowledge of improvable starting-points (concepts and truth) and demonstrative knowledge of what follows from them.’ (Aristotle, 340BC)

Metaphysics

Ontology Philosophy of space & time Causality Modality Composition

Distinguishing Appearance & Reality

'We all start from naive realism, i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different.’ (Russell, 1950)

We can distinguish between Appearance and Reality by

i) empirical investigation ii) rational enquiry

Structuring the world using ‘part & whole’

Applying the notion of ‘part and whole’ to the world at large

Examples: My arm is a part of my body This jigsaw piece is a part of the jigsaw This thread is a part of this piece of cloth A branch is a part of this tree

Monism versus atomism

Parmenidean Monism (approx. 515-440BC) The fundamental structure of the world is the Whole

Atomism (approx. 460-380BC) The fundamental structure of the world is the Parts

‘By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: in reality atoms and void.’ (Democritus, approx. 350BC)

Monism

Pluralism

A (very) brief history of monism and pluralism

E.g. Spinoza (1677) versus Leibniz (1714)

Bradley (1893) versus Russell (1903)

The contemporary debate

We can formalise the notion of a proper part as follows:

Pxy = An object, x, is a proper part of a larger object, y, if some part of y is distinct from x

The part-whole relation has the following attributes:

x y z ((Pxy & Pyz) → Pxz) = Transitive x y (Pxy → ¬Pyx) = Asymmetrical x (Pxx) = Irreflexive

z

y

x

The contemporary debate

This allows for strict partial orderings.

Universe

Galaxies

Planets

Living organism

s

Molecules

Simples?

Mountains

Moons

Galaxies

Stars

Individual suns

Gas molecules

Simples?

The contemporary debate

Contemporary Monisms

The Whole is spacetime The Whole is an ultimate mereological

fusion

versus...

Contemporary Pluralisms

The Parts are everyday objects The Parts are the subject of fundamental

physics

Super-substantivalism

Priority monism

The structure of the world

How do we determine which of these proposed accounts are correct?

Engage in conceptual analysis

Test theories for internal logical consistency

Critically examine the arguments for each account

See how they fit with science, our pre-theoretic intuitions and commonsense