Information, mereology and vagueness

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Bittner, Thomas^{; *}

Affiliations: Philosophy Department, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: bittner3@buffalo.edu.

Note: [] Accepted by: Michael Gruninger

Abstract: Classical systems of mereology identify a maximuml set of jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint (RCC5) relations. The amount of information that is carried by each member of this set of (crisp) relations is determined by the number of bits of information that are required to distinguish all the members of the set. It is postulated in this paper, that vague mereological relations are limited in the amount of information they can carry. That is, if a crisp mereological relation can carry N bits of information, then a vague mereological relation can carry only 1⩽n<N bits. The aim of this paper is it to explore these ideas in the context of various systems of vague mereological relations. The resulting formalism is non-classical in the sense of quantum information theory.

Keywords: Mereology, RCC5 relations, vagueness, information, quantum information

DOI: 10.3233/AO-230277

Journal: Applied Ontology, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 119-167, 2023