Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In this paper I argue for the analyticity of mereological universalism. On this hitherto unpopular view, “For any things, there is something they compose” is an analytic truth of ordinary English. Setting aside general scepticism about analyticity, I give a two-step metasemantic argument for this conclusion. Firstly I appeal to considerations of ordinary usage to I argue that, for any ordinary type of composite F, it is analytic that if some things are arranged F-wise, they compose an F. This indicates that any genuine restriction on composition would also have to be analytic. I then argue that on the most plausible way of extrapolating the rules of language from ordinary usage, there is no analytic restriction on composition; and so composition is analytically unrestricted. In the last section I reply to stated and anticipated objections.