Priest (P2) One, ‘Wholes and Their Parts’, summary

 

by Corry Shores
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Summary of

Graham Priest

One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness

Preface

P2:
Wholes and Their Parts

Brief Summary
Part 1 will discuss unified objects, ‘gluons’, which on account of their being made of many parts, may have contradictory properties. It also addresses and solves the Bradely regress by proposing a non-transitive theory of identity. And finally it will discuss further ramifications of gluons and as well Heidegger’s question of being.

 

Summary

Many things are made of parts. So in one sense, something is one in that it is a whole, but in another sense it is many in that it is made of many parts. This means that things might have contradictory properties. “Part I of the book simply accepts this conclusion: these things—gluons, as they will be called in Chapter 1—do have contradictory properties.”
(xvi)

The second chapter address and solves the Bradley regress by “spelling out the required theory of identity, and how gluons fit into the picture” (xvi).

Priest shows the technical coherence of these and other parts in the appendix where he expresses them using formal logic.

Chapter 5 addresses the issue “any account of identity according to which the substitutivity of identicals is not valid is not philosophically coherent.” (xvi)

The rest of Part I explores some of the immediate ramifications of gluons, such as their connection with tropes (or, as I will call them, pins—particular instantiations), with universals themselves, and with two very particular objects | nothing and everything.
(xvi-xvii)

Priest’s gluon theory also “provides a solution to Heidegger’s notorious Seinsfrage—the question of Being.” (xvii)

 

 

Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.