Now, isn’t that a headline? Despite the high-brow, dense, nature of academic philosophy - think Philosophy Quarterly - I much prefer an intrigue-provoking headline. You’re reading this so, I suppose I got you. 

This article aims to dissect and synthesise the metaphysical position of mereological nihilism, ironically, breaking this disconcerting viewpoint into its basic elements and arguments. The irony here stems from mereological nihilism's fundamental stance: that there is only such a thing as a basic element, and that the composition of objects never truly occurs. 

Let’s break down the jargon here. Mereology is the study of the relationship between parts and wholes. It explores elements within a greater object or system and how these elements relate to each other. Nihilism, in its broadest sense, is the denial of inherent and objective meaning. Common encounters with nihilism usually involve Friedrich Nietzche's seminal attempts to overcome it. Nietzche focused on existential nihilism, the rejection of objective morality, with his concern particularly concentrated on the absence of moral meaning within life and religion (hence, ‘God is dead’). The nihilistic aspect here involves the rejection of the objective recognition of composite objects - singular entities formed of many parts.

Mereological nihilism, then, is the rejection of the common-sense ideal of composite objects. Mereological nihilism argues that there is no such thing as the whole, and instead, only the most basic, common elements, depositing these are the only real objects. 

As asserted by David Cornell in his 2014 article Merelogical Nihilism and the Problem of Emergence (available here): “For the [mereological] nihilist, there are no cars; there are no houses; there are not even any human beings”. This is not to say nihilists deny these objects' existence entirely; only denying them as real when they are considered composite. The shared commonality of all objects, the result of all objects being merely different arrangements of foundational elements, means all objects are mereological identical. To revisit the examples provided by Cornell: cars, houses, and humans are the same, and only differ as a result of how their shared parts are organised. 

Mereological nihilism is, to some extent, philosophy funnelled through physics: an ardent physicist's take on the basic structures of reality. On a subatomic level, objects are merely interacting particles. Objects may be the culmination of apparent parts, such as the brick and mortar of a house, but these elements when placed together are merely a collection of the same fundamental elements, the same interacting particles. Thus, the existence of the house is more so a simplified, socially-accepted expression for the arrangement of the microscopic building blocks of the physical world. By this logic, two different things are only artificially separate because of a mental distinction we place upon them.

Criticising mereological nihilism often involves its contentious perspective on humans. Whilst still challenging status quo ontology, mereological nihilism is far more graspable when referring to inanimate things. Within its own right disconcerting to a certain extent, referring to a pencil as mereologically the same as a pair of jeans is more easily graspable than the equally true statement (from a mereological nihilist perspective) that humans are not mereologically different from such objects. This, by extension, means all humans are the same, and that we are not unique, in that we share our status as particular arrangements of more foundational elements. Any differences between humans, therefore, are again simply mental distinctions we self-impose. No human is unique from another human, but neither is any human distinct from a lamp. This appears a step too absurd. 

Adolf Hitler killed approximately 6 million Jews in the abhorred Holocaust; Genghis Khan was responsible for the deaths of around 40 million people during various conquests and subjugations, raping and pillaging thousands in the process; Joseph Stalin can be attributed to the deaths of as many as 20 million during his reign as General Secretary of the USSR’s Communist Party, largely through self-imposed famine. I have framed some of the worst individuals in history to dramatically illustrate the simple criticism: You cannot perceive the scale and horror of such immorality, let alone carry it out. You are not Hitler, Khan, or Stalin. Yet mereological nihilism struggles to reconcile the sentiment ‘all matter is the culmination of its foundational elements’ with the infinitely complex capacity and variety within human development. 

Contending the implication I am only different from Adolf Hitler because I create a mental distinction between himself and I is at the core of mereological nihilism’s limitations as a metaphysical school of thought: it is only applicable to the inanimate, not the animate. 

An interesting consequence of these various premises is this conundrum stemming from the work of American philosopher Peter Van Inwagen: if material objects lack real distinctions; if minds are distinct, this suggests minds are not material matter. Alex O’Connor has framed this as mereological nihilism’s “argument for the immateriality of the mind”. 

From a theological perspective, this can interpreted as supporting evidence for God. The notion of humans possessing unique material qualities supports the idea of Imago Dei - the belief we are made in God’s image, as God Himself is attributed with a similar uniqueness. In this sense, mereological nihilism, as opposed to dismantling notions of human exceptionalism, inadvertently enforces it by suggesting we possess a distinct material status to the world around us. This metaphysical conundrum serves to further the enduring sentiment of human dominion over Earth that has domineered our history.

Mereological nihilism is a fascinating strand of metaphysics. Whilst raising intriguing ontological questions, it is grounded in the absurd, not in the denotative sense that no elements of it are without merit or unreasonable, but in its connotative stand against common sense. The most intuitive argument against mereological nihilism, however, is that of common sense: the obvious existence of composite objects. Whilst merited in its breaking down of conventional knowledge, its inability to consider the element of human complexity makes it difficult to fully embrace. Nonetheless, it is an exciting school of thought that challenges our preconceived notions of reality, cementing its challenging but evident utility.

Cianan Sheekey

Managing Editor 

18th March 2025