• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.167-201
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• 2010

This paper aims to scrutinize the possibility of mereology as philosophically satisfiable metalogic. Motivation for this is straightforward. As I see, a traditional approach to metalogic presented in the name of mathematical logic posits the existence of mathematical entities such as sets, functions, models, etc. to give definitions of logical concepts like logical consequence. As a result, whenever logic is used in any individual sciences, this set-theoretical metalogic cannot but add these mathematical entities to the domain of them. This fact makes this approach contradict to the ontological conservativeness of logic. Mereology, however, has been alleged to be ontologically innocent, while it is a formal system very similar to set theory. So it may well be that some people thought of mereology as a good substitute for set theoretic metalanguage and concepts for ontologically neutral metalogic. Unfortunately, when we look into argument for the ontological innocence of mereology, we can find that mereological entities such as mereological sums or fusions are not ontologically neutral. Thus we can conclude that mereological approach to metalogic is not promising at all.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.347-378
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• 2012

Holocaust fiction has always raised the moral and aesthetic questions about the nature of mimesis and the literary representation of atrocity. The Holocaust, defying any representation of it, has been considered as unspeakable, unknowable, and incomprehensible. This essay aims to explore Martin Amis's narrative strategies in Time's Arrow to conduct the difficult tasks of re-creating the primal scene and of discovering a moral reality behind the Holocaust. One of the major narrative experiments in Time's Arrow is the time reversal: the story moves from the present of phony innocence to the past of unrelieved horror. Reversing the temporal order of events reverses causality and generates the revision of the morality, ultimately creating the epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Amis's novel is also narrated from the perspective of a double persona of the protagonist who, as a Nazi doctor, participated in the massacre in Auschwitz and then fled to the United States following the war. As almost a self-conscious storyteller, the narrator shares a sense of retrospective guilt with the reader who finally realizes that the Holocaust was a world turned upside down morally. Amis's postmodern narrative strategies are unusual enough to warrant a new way of representing the Holocaust.