by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. You will find typos and other distracting mistakes, because I have not finished proofreading. Bracketed commentary is my own. Please consult the original text, as my summaries could be wrong.]
Summary of
Graham Priest
One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness
Ch.2
Identity and Gluons
2.1
How Gluons Glue
Brief summary:
(2.1.1) The gluon is the factor that binds parts into a unity. It has the contradictory properties of both being and not being an object. We now will see how gluons bind parts into unities, which involves breaking the Bradley regress. (2.1.2) The binding action of gluons involves non-transitive identity.
[How Gluons Will Glue]
[Gluons’ Non-Transitive Identity]
Summary
[How Gluons Will Glue]
[The gluon is the factor that binds parts into a unity. It has the contradictory properties of both being and not being an object. We now will see how gluons bind parts into unities, which involves breaking the Bradley regress.]
[In section 1.3.1 we noted how things have parts that together compose the unity they belong to by means of a factor that binds the parts together in a unifying way. This unificatory binding factor is called the gluon. We discussed the problems with seeing it just as an object-part and with seeing it just as not being an object-part (as for example being instead a relation) (see section 1.4, section 1.5, and section 1.6). As a result, in section 1.6.6, Priest proposed that it is best to hold the dialetheic position that gluons both are and are not objects. In sections 1.3.4 and 1.6.6, Priest noted that the gluon is a contradictory entity, having the contradictory properties both of being an object and of not being an object (and see section 1.3.5). But we still need to explain how the gluon binds the parts into a unity. (On this importance of the how question when accounting for something philosophically, see section 1.5.5.) This is what we now endeavor, which involves us seeing how we will break the Bradley regress (see section 1.4 especially).]
In the previous chapter we saw that there must be something which accounts for a unity composed of parts where one exists – a gluon; and we saw that a gluon may be expected to have contradictory properties. But we have not yet faced the question of how the gluon does its job: how does it bind the parts (including itself) into a whole? Its having contradictory properties does not immediately address this question (though, one might suspect, it is going to play an important role). In this chapter, we look at the answer. The key is breaking the Bradley regress. We will start by seeing how.
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[Gluons’ Non-Transitive Identity]
[The binding action of gluons involves non-transitive identity.]
[In order to explain how gluons glue, we will also need to change the logical properties that we normally ascribe to identity, namely, we need to conceive it as being non-transitive. First Priest will give an informal account of gluonic non-transitive identity, and at the end, he provides a more technical account.]
This will immediately launch us into a discussion of identity. Identity cannot work in the way that orthodoxy takes it to if gluons are to do their job. In particular, it must be non-transitive. How so? The rest of the chapter explains, and articulates the nature of gluons more precisely in this theoretical context. The ideas are spelled out informally. Full technical details can be found in the technical appendix to the chapter, Section 2.10, which can be skipped without loss of continuity by those with no taste for such things.
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Priest, Graham. 2014. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University.
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