• Troodon Roar
    18
    The title of this thread sounds crazy, but once I explain my reasoning and give some examples, the commonsensical nature of what I am saying will become apparent.

    I maintain that it is a metaphysical principle that each part of a whole is always, in a sense, greater than the whole. I will explain why by giving some examples.

    Example A: In an ionic compound, two ions (charged atoms) combine to form a molecule that is chargeless, as the opposite charges cancel each other out. So each part has a property — charge — that the whole lacks.

    Example B: Let’s say you have one cup of orange juice. Then you add 1,000 gallons of water to it. Now you have a mixture of orange juice and water, but consisting mostly of water. So now the mixture is not very “orange juice-y” because the orange juice has been so heavily diluted by the addition of the water.

    Example C: A rectangle is made up of two diagonal triangles, yet each of the parts is a different shape than the whole they compose. So each part has a quality (being triangular) that the whole lacks.

    Example D: The climate of one region of a country is arid. However, the rest of the country is not arid. As a result, the climate of the country as a whole is not arid, since the arid region’s contribution to the whole is diluted by the contribution of the rest of the country, which is not arid.

    These examples show that it is a general metaphysical principle that, whenever there is a whole, it always lacks the full nature of each of its parts, since the nature of each part is diluted by the natures of the other parts that compose the whole with it.

    I maintain that this is a philosophical thesis that makes perfectly good sense if you think about it deeply enough, and comes to seem patently obvious.
  • praxis
    6.2k
    For example B, instead of adding water, what if you separated the sugars, coloring, etc. in the cup of orange juice. Then not only would it no longer be, as you say, orange juice-y, the orange juice would no longer exist at all.

    Same principle with the other examples.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    I guess it depends on what values/properties you focus on.

    In assigning values to everything, it seems we can always focus on whatever value hierarchies place our own interests at the top, and then simply ignore, devalue or deny those evaluative properties that fail to serve our purpose or remind us our limited perspective is neither objective ‘truth’ nor a priority.

    It’s apologetics masquerading as reason. Don’t fall into the trap.
  • whollyrolling
    551
    So the OP is trolling, right? I was going to say that there's no way anyone thinks like this, but I'd be lying to myself.

    If the OP is actually sincere, then it needs to go back to the philosophical drawing board because everything described in it counters its intended point, and no amount of deep pondering can change that.
  • SethRy
    152
    As understood by many people, value or merit evaluates and decides the superiority of something, and when triangleness or orange-juiceness is paramount in the situation, they are more valuable. As opposed to the whole that is most certainly, more valuable in number,

    The argued whole, as I see it, became part of the portion rather than the primitive; portion exiting the whole. Water, as of different substance, became part of a partially different substance, of which is the portion. When the value of the whole merges in its oneness with ironically a portion, the concepts of value towards superiority is set aside. The whole argument collapses, In my opinion at least. If the whole is added to a: different, deceptive, unambiguous substance, the whole becomes a portion as well - likewise the original portion. Both added together, is the whole.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    What I wanted to say is that you maybe wrong. Let's look at the original formulation: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This means that there are some properties of the whole that can't be explained by just looking at the constituent parts. A good example of this would be life I presume. We know all the parts of a cell and yet we haven't been able to create life.

    You claim that the part is greater than the whole. I think that's incorrect because we can explain the properties of the parts by decomposing the whole. So, no, the parts are not greater than the whole. However, we could say the parts are different in some respects from the whole but that would be just restating the original true claim viz. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
  • Troodon Roar
    18
    Whenever you have a whole consisting of two or more parts, the nature of the whole is the nature of both or all of the parts taken together. Which means that the nature of each part is diminished when it is taken as part of a whole compared to when it is taken alone, because the presence of the nature(s) of the other part(s) dilutes it.

    And the more parts a whole has, the smaller the proportion each part makes up of the whole is.

    For example, if a whole has 6 parts, each part is 1/6 of the whole, whereas if a whole has 64 parts, each part is only 1/64 of the whole, and so on.

    What I’m saying is obviously correct. Perhaps the title was misleading. I do not actually believe that a part is greater than a whole quantitatively. In a quantitative sense, I acknowledge that wholes are always greater than parts, in the sense that they have quantitatively more components.

    What I mean is that, comparing a part of a whole to the whole itself, the whole is greater in terms of quantity, but the part is greater in terms of proportion.

    Here’s an example:

    It is very common for scientists to talk of the size of a creature’s brain size IN PROPORTION TO its body size. Clearly, if you were to enlarge a human’s body to the size of a blue whale’s, but kept the size of the brain the same, the larger human would be proportionately far less brainy than the smaller one.
    In the same way, using the same logic, my head is proportionately far more brainy than my body as a whole.

    It is clear that, the more parts a whole has, the smaller each part is proportionately. For example, the state of Arizona is part of the country the United States which is part of the continent North America. But Arizona makes up a larger proportion, or percentage, of the United States as a whole than it makes up of North America as a whole, because North America also includes Canada and Mexico and Central America, which dilutes the presence of Arizona.
    So the United States is proportionately more “Arizona-ish” than North America is, precisely because it is smaller. So being smaller allows each of its parts (it applies to any part equally; Arizona was just an example) to make up a greater proportion of the whole.

    So what I’m saying is that more parts = each part is smaller proportionately, and less parts = each part is greater proportionately. So the fact that the larger whole has more parts is balanced out by the fact that the smaller whole has each part be proportionately greater.

    And in the hypothetical case of a simple, an object composed of no parts whatsoever, although it would be the smallest in quantity, it would be the greatest proportionately (it would consist 100% of itself, obviously).

    I hope I explained this in a way that can be more easily understood and makes sense. Basically, I’m defining “greater” in a different sense. A whole is always quantitatively greater than a part, but a part is always proportionately greater than a whole.
  • fishfry
    2.6k
    A whole is always quantitatively greater than a part, but a part is always proportionately greater than a whole.Troodon Roar

    What do you think about the even numbers within the set of positive integers?

    These examples show that it is a general metaphysical principle that, whenever there is a whole, it always lacks the full nature of each of its parts,Troodon Roar

    Isn't that just what they call emergence? Hydrogen and oxygen aren't wet, but water is wet. Etc.
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