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In contemporary mereology, a simple is any thing that has no proper parts. Sometimes the term "atom" is used, although in recent years the term "simple" has become the standard. Simples are to be contrasted with atomless gunk (where something is "gunky" if it is such that every proper part has a further proper part). Necessarily, given the definitions, everything is either composed of simples, gunk or a mixture of the two. Classical mereology is consistent with both the existence of gunk and either finite or infinite simples (see Hodges and Lewis 1968). Given a mereology containing the null individual, no object other than the null individual would be simple. ==The Simple Question== Mirroring the Special Composition Question is the Simple Question.〔Markosian 1998〕 It asks what the jointly necessary and sufficient conditions are for ''x'' to be a mereological simple. In the literature this question explicitly concerns what it is for a material object to lack proper parts, although there is no reason why similar questions cannot be asked of things from other ontological categories. There have been many suggested answers to the Simple Question. Answers include that ''x'' is a simple if and only it is a point-sized object; that ''x'' is a simple if and only if it is indivisible; or that ''x'' is a simple if and only if it is maximally continuous. Kris McDaniel has argued that what it is for an object to be a simple is a matter of brute fact, and that there is no non-trivial answer to the Simple Question (2007b). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Simple (philosophy)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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