"'Greater than' must mean 'having more qualities than'"
"'More real than' must mean 'having more essence than'"
"the systems-theory fascination with emergence [argues] that the whole and the parts are as real as one another, but in such a way that the whole has more qualities than the sum of its parts" ["postion 2" in Morton's diagram]
"position 1," by contrast, is that "the parts are less real"--"Gaia theory," minus the "charming foliage." "The parts in this sense are just replaceable components" [see "the ecological argument against holism"]
in position 1, "[i]f something is more vivid than something else, it must be more existent. There is no room for quasi-existing, shadowy, spectral existing shot through with nothingness"
"individualism" is at position 3--parts are more real than wholes; Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society"
Morton 's "subscendence" is at position 4-- parts and wholes are equally real, but "the whole is less than the sum of its parts"
125: "To exist is to subscend one's parts. It's not that I don't exist, that my parts are more real than me. It's that I faintly exist."
see the diagram on 107