John West wrote:

Well, there is no “material composition” or “immaterial composition". There is just composition. Or to put it another way, mereological relations can have both material and immaterial entities as relata.

(It's possible, of course, that there is something contained in the mereological concepts that entails that immaterial entities can't stand in the corresponding mereological relations. But we have fairly precise definitions for our mereological concepts, and as far as we can tell this isn't the case.)

If we take composition to be a generic asymmetry relation (a whole entails more than one part), then any single part must lack something relevant that the whole possesses. No immaterial parts satisfy the necessary condition, and therefore immaterial composition is impossible. For example, an immaterial mind might be said to be composed of multiple thoughts. However, beyond a mere causal relation, there are no asymmetries upon which to predicate a part to whole relation.

John West wrote:

I don't understand why you think mereological relations need to be reduced. Or are you asking why your experiences constitute one mind, but some of your experiences and some of mine don't? The answer, if so, is that the first is a unity, whereas the second is a mere sum.

What is unity? How does it satisfy the relation I specified above, or, why does it not need to?

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

You have to tell me how you use "pattern" and these words correctly if you don't use them as universals, here. My point still stands if they're tropes.

A pattern, for material entities, is a difference in the conjoined or disjoined relation between the totality of conjuncts under consideration.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

Similarly, using "different" entails at least one universal or a property or a trope, for if everything is a strict particular, it's impossible to compare things, or even describe them.

Not at all. Two physically identical entities can still differ in their behaviour, for example.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

Not my point again : if you're using "persons" as meaningful and then arguing that it's a mere abstraction, I'm afraid I fail to see what you mean. It can mean something for you, but that's all. To me, it's like saying "the cheese cake speaks blue when it's Paris".

Meaning is simply a link between a label/thought and a referent. Abstractions are predicated upon reality. I fail to see the inconsistency there.

Greg wrote:

​I am trying to figure out what exactly is being affirmed and denied by the sides here. Do you think that thoughts do not have propositional content? Or just that they do not have "universal" propositional content? If the latter, what does that mean?

I'm more certain that only particulars exist, than I am that propositional content does not exist. In part because, not using the term myself, I leave it for others to define "propositional content". I don't want to define it as entailing universals, and then have some strict particularist come alone and say "I believe in propositional content, you have no right to define it as entailing universals". Having said that, I do think that there is a non-arbitrariness to soundness, etc.

Greg wrote:

Miguel said he takes the propositional content of a thought to consist in a universal form. You are, clearly, denying that. But are you also denying that my thought that the Eiffel Tower is in France has the content that the Eiffel Tower is in France, which is the same content as your thought, if you have such, that the Eiffel Tower is in France, even though our thoughts are, as no one would deny, particulars?

I'd say your thought is more of the form "abcxyz", where those letters represent more basic thoughts. Some or all of which may be innate to the brain through evolutionary selection. However, my intention is not so much to stake out any particular account of mentality, but rather to illustrate the significant number of particular-only possibilities around so that invoking universals is an unjustified leap past models that might be seen to rid one of some kind of significance. I have also raised the issue affecting UPC of explaining how people think fallaciously if valid inference is innate in the causal potency thoughts.

surroundx wrote:

If we take composition to be a generic asymmetry relation (a whole entails more than one part), then any single part must lack something relevant that the whole possesses. No immaterial parts satisfy the necessary condition, and therefore immaterial composition is impossible. For example, an immaterial mind might be said to be composed of multiple thoughts.

You're right that a whole has to have more than one proper part, but as you point out a complex mind does have more than one proper part.

It, however, doesn't follow that the whole needs something those parts lack beyond the property of being composed of all those parts (or, at least, a property that property is reducible to), being partially identical to a thought, belief, desire, etc. that whichever part you want to show distinct from the whole is distinct from, etc.

However, beyond a mere causal relation, there are no asymmetries upon which to predicate a part to whole relation.

I still don't understand why you think mereological relations need to be reduced. There are some, like mereological universalists, who make them internal and then argue that all internal relations are nothing over and above their relata. But I don't otherwise know of any mereologists who (qua mereologists, rather than because of prior commitments like physicalism or blob nominalism) think mereological relations need to be reduced.

If the relation R holds between a and not-b, such that R exists even though it is not unifying ab, then the ontological grounding is the differential physical proximity of a and b between the sum and unification.

You've just told me that the ontological grounding of the unity of aRb is R. I explain why R can't ground aRb's unity (i.e. the sum-fact difference) in the first article.

(The sum and unity are, anyway, distinct even when John is two feet from the tea cup (unless there are relata-specific relations).)

If blob nominalism affirms properties (in the form of reducible relations), and I deny properties, how can I be a blob nominalist?

It doesn't follow from the claim that blob nominalism doesn't affirm real, irreducible relations that it affirms reducible ones. It also doesn't follow that if blob nominalists can affirm (conservatively) reduced relations all blob nominalists must affirm (conservatively) reduced relations. 

(I hedged because Rodriguez-Pereyra adopts Armstrong's reductive principle for internal relations (or a version of it, anyway) to block Russell's regress, and I'm not sure whether he takes it to involve a conservative or eliminative reduction (the latter, if I have to guess).)