ABSTRACT
J. L. Austin famously claimed that in every philosophical work there are two parts: the part where the author makes some outrageous claim, and the part where the author takes it back. It is a realism of this sort that lies behind the mereological nihilism at the heart of Buddhist Reductionism. Realists are suspicious of such things as universals, properties, and resemblances, given that they look like just the sorts of things that would not be thought to exist were it not for our use of general concepts. Buddhist antirealists claim that all things are empty, and by 'emptiness' they mean being devoid of intrinsic nature. It is a basic fact of people's experience that things undergo alteration. Milk becomes curds; water freezes to form ice; leaves change colour, fall to the ground, and decay; people mature, grow old, and die.
