Jeffrey Grupp

Mereological nihilism is the philosophical position that the only items that exist are partless quantum particles. In my three articles

1. "Mereological Nihilism: Quantum Atomism and the Impossibility of Material Constitution," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 245-386,

2. "The Impossibility of Relations Between Non-Collocated Spatial Objects and Non-Identical Topological Spaces," Axiomathes: An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 85-141(57), and

3. "Western Analytic Metaphysics Reduces to a Philosophy of Brahman"  [published in two parts: 1 and 2] (Published in the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research),

I argue that mereological nihilism is the correct theory of reality. In article #2, I argue at length why it is truly surprising, and downright suspicious, that mereological nihilism is banished from philosophy, and is not considered the premier philosophy today.

      According to mereological nihilism, quantum particles do not accumulate or connect in order to give rise to composite objects (objects that have parts). For that reason, then there are no empirical objects whatsoever (if an observer perceives an empirical objects, that observer is hallucinating). Only quantum basic building blocks exist (objects without parts exist, such as electrons, quarks, etc.), and thus the world humans ordinarily experience in their daily life that is full of objects with parts is a product of human misperception (if we could see clearly, we'd not see composite objects).

      Consider this passage from Rosen and Dorr from their interesting article:

There are no protons or galaxies or houses of cards. There are rather billions of simple particles arranged proton-wise and galaxy-wise and house-of-cards-wise. The most radical view of this sort is compositional nihilism, according to which there is no such thing as a composite entity.[i]

The sort of mereological nihilism I argue for is such where relations between part and whole are argued do not exist, even though our senses might give us the impression that there are parts and wholes in reality and thus that such metaphysical (unobservable) relations do exist. This issue is discussed in much more detail on my page on the philosophy of Brahman. (Also relevant to mereological nihilism is the philosophy of blob theory.)

If there are no parts and wholes, then there is only one thing that exists. It is unclear whether "one thing" means that there are numerically distinct yet indistinguishable items (which is, strictly speaking, one thing), or if there are is just one item with no non-coinciding indistinguishable instances. Paper number 2 above that is coming out in Axiomathes explores the first option (mereological nihilist reality involves many numerically distinct yet indistinguishable items), and paper 1 listed above that was published in JICPR explores the second option (mereological nihilist reality involves one item with only one instance). (I also explore the first option--numerically distinct indistinguishable instances) in significant detail in the conclusion of my 2005 article in IIJBS on Buddhist atomism. This conclusion is where I introduce the philosophy of abstract atomism, which is intended to be progress in the discipline of Buddhist atomism.)

More information coming soon. Sorry for the delay...