Abstract: Formal mereologies are axiomatised in a variety of different ways, with a variety of different primitives. This paper distinguishes three such ways, whose primitives are part, overlap, and proper part respectively. Not every formal mereology can be axiomatised in each of these ways. This paper considers what formal features a mereology much have in order to be successfully axiomatisable in each way.
Parsons, Josh. 2014. “The Many Primitives of Mereology.” In Mereology and Location, edited by Shieva Kleinschmidt. Oxford University Press.
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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