Mereology: Axioms

This week we’ll explore progressively stronger mereologies, beginning with Minimal Mereology (if we haven’t covered it yet), moving to Extensional Mereology, and finally looking at Classical Extensional Mereology.  Put another way:  we’ll start with claims like “no things can be parts of one another” and “if you have just some of something, there must be some more of it”.  We’ll move on to more controversial claims, like “no distinct things can have exactly the same parts”.  And finally, we’ll look at the question of what it takes for some collection of objects to make up a further thing.  The tools covered this week apply widely and are helpful even outside of Metaphysics.