Summation relations and portions of stuff |
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Authors: | Maureen Donnelly Thomas Bittner |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, SUNY/Buffalo, 135 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA |
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Abstract: | According to the prevalent ‘sum view’ of stuffs, each portion of stuff is a mereological sum of its subportions. The purpose
of this paper is to re-examine the sum view in the light of a modal temporal mereology which distinguishes between different
varieties of summation relations. While admitting David Barnett’s recent counter-example to the sum view (Barnett, Philos
Rev 113:89–100, 2004), we show that there is nonetheless an important sense in which all portions of stuff are sums of their
subportions. We use our summation relations to develop, as an alternative to the sum view, an analysis of stuffs that distinguishes
between the ways in which different sorts of stuffs are sums of their subportions.
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Keywords: | Mereology Summation Composition Stuff |
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