Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Parts, philosophy: in contrast to elements of a set, parts of a whole can stand in hierarchical relations. There may be dependencies, in particular ontological dependencies between parts and whole, as well as between parts of a whole, because parts may not exist if a questionable part does not exist. See also extrinsic, transitivity, reflexivity, symmetry, mereology, set theory, elements, order, overlap, dependency, ontological dependence.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Ruth Millikan on Parts - Dictionary of Arguments

I 283
Temporal part/Millikan: the temporal part is a momentary or almost momentary three-dimensional object.
>Mereology
.
I 284
Analogously, you can split an object into time slices.
>Fourdimensionalism.
Just as with spatial parts, two temporal parts of a whole can never be identical. Otherwise they could not be distinguished.
Identity/Self-Identity/Unity/Uniformity/Millikan: to be identical with oneself, a thing must never exemplify a principle of uniformity. E.g. also a very loosely held sheep herd is always this herd itself.
Temporal identity: also plays no role in the question of self-identity: no one believes that an object state to t1 would be the same as to t2.
>Temporal identity.
Unity/Object/Thing/Millikan: nevertheless, we need principles of uniformity to approach objects as such. Thus, it is about the question as to which relation must have the states S1 and S2 in order to be valid as states of the same thing.
I 285
Identity/unity/Millikan: thus questions of the identity of a thing do not seem to be separated from questions of the principles of uniformity.
>Identity/Millikan, >Unity/Millikan.
Problem: there are often different ways to summarize parts into a whole. Here we must ask which category the whole is to belong to.
Self-Identity/Sameness/Millikan: slef-identity then appears relative to the category to which a thing should belong.
Problem: is the water surface S1 part of the same water mass as water surface S2? Such questions are not fully defined. We need principles to summarize parts. The relations between the parts can also be more or less loose.
I 286
And that has nothing to do with the identity of the whole!
Whole: can also be specified by a mere list. This would identify the whole without mentioning the relations of the parts at all. And the self-identity of the whole would not be dependent on the strength of the cohesion of the parts at all.
Temporal/spatial: so far the analogy between temporal and spatial parts seems to apply.
Cf. >Part-of-relation.

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Millikan I
R. G. Millikan
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism Cambridge 1987

Millikan II
Ruth Millikan
"Varieties of Purposive Behavior", in: Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thomspon and H. L. Miles (Eds.) Albany 1997, pp. 189-1967
In
Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild, Frankfurt/M. 2005


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