Reflective Mereology (Bokai Yao)

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will meet on September 19th from 4:15-6:15 (NY time) in-person at the Graduate Center (Room 7314) for a talk by Bokai Yao (Notre Dame).

Title: Reflective Mereology

Abstract: I explore a new theory of mereology based on a mereological reflection principle. Reflective mereology has natural fusion principles but also refutes certain principles of classical mereology such as Universal Fusion and Fusion Uniqueness. Moreover, reflective mereology avoids Uzquiano’s cardinality problem–the problem that classical mereology tends to clash with set theory when they both quantify over everything. In particular, assuming large cardinals, I construct a natural model of reflective mereology and second-order ZFCU with Limitation of Size. In the model, classical mereology holds when the quantifiers are restricted to the urelements.

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