UC Davis

In this work I articulate and motivate the thesis that composition is identity (CAI): the mereological composition relation just is the identity relation. I analyze the important objections to CAI and assess the space of responses. I evaluate the current approaches to CAI discussed in the literature, raising some new objections, but also defending them where I can. Finally, I put forward two novel, relativist approaches to CAI, Benign Collapse Theory and Nominalist Count Theory, and argue that they improve upon the extant versions of CAI currently found in the literature.