18 February 2014, Logic Tea, Karoly Varasdi

Abstract

In the talk I propose an answer to the question, how are we able to categorize/classify an incomplete entity x as an incomplete F when in actual fact there is no F which x is a part of? My arguments are based on how natural language deals with incompleteness, in particular, with incomplete events, as exemplified by progressive sentences. After a brief survey of the possible strategies to cope with the problem (including a simple extensional attempt and some modal approaches), I propose a solution that draws upon the basic mereological ("part of") relation, but, still, can account for the existence of parts that do not have a corresponding whole. The key idea will be to define a way of classifying incomplete entities on the basis of no more than the classification of complete ones, the mereological relation on the domain, and a set of contextually-given alternative predicates.

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