"Identity" as a mereological term

Jeroen Smid

pp. 2367-2385

in: Andreas Hüttemann (ed), Causation and structuralism, Synthese 194 (7), 2017.

Abstract

The mereological predicate ‘is part of’ can be used to define the predicate ‘is identical with’. I argue that this entails that mereological theories can be ideologically simpler than nihilistic theories that do not use the notion of parthood—contrary to what has been argued by Ted Sider. Moreover, if one accepts an extensional mereology, there are good philosophical reasons apart from ideological simplicity to give a mereological definition of identity.