The Mereology of Potentiality (Thursday - Week 1, TT19)

Metaphysical monism, in two guises, has made a comeback. Schaffer’s version accepts classical mereology but argues that the concrete cosmic whole is prior to its parts: Priority Monism. Horgan and Potrc argue that the concrete cosmic whole is all there (concretely) is: Blobjectivism. For both positions, the notion of truthmakers plays a central role in the argument. The backdrop is Tarskian semantics and Quinean ontology. Frege’s conception of truth is the reverse of Tarski’s. For Frege, it is truth, not satisfaction/subsumption, that is primary: a is subsumed under F because ‘Fa’ is true. More correctly, because ‘Fa’ refers to the True. The True, an object, is the unique referent of all sentences that express true thoughts. When one adds to the mix other Fregean ideas, such as the context principle and his method of sense analysis, we are only a short step away from a version of Priority Monism. A Priority Monism that concerns not only concreta, but everything. Or so I shall argue.

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