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Consistency of lesniewski's mereology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

Czesław Lejewski*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester, England

Extract

According to Sobociński's recollection, the consistency of Mereology was proved by Leśniewski by means of an appropriate interpretation within the framework of the theory of real numbers. His proof was never published, but in a recent paper R. E. Clay has succeeded in reconstructing a version of it.1 Clay's result amounts to showing that if Lesniewski's Ontology expanded by the addition of the axioms for the real numbers is consistent then Mereology is consistent. Without casting any doubts on the validity of the proof one can hardly fail to note that here we have a case where the consistency of a conceptually simple theory is made to depend on the consistency of a theory which from the point of view of intuition is far from being obvious.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 1969

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References

[1]Clay, R. E., Consistency of Leśniewski's mereology relative to real number system, this Journal, vol. 33 (1968), pp. 251257.Google Scholar
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