Abstract: Borges’ short story “The Aleph” describes a situation that seems to some philosophers to be an example of mereological circularity: of two distinct, non-coinciding individuals, each of which is a part of the other. Is this coherent? I describe a way of generalising classical mereology that allows for this type of circularity.
Updated 11 Nov 2013: corrected a few typoes and clarified definition of “betweenness”
Until September 2016 I am a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College and an Associate Professor in the Oxford Philosophy Faculty. From then on, I'll be a Senior Adviser at the New Zealand Ministry of Transport.
My intellectual interests are mainly in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and ethics, and of course transport policy.
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