Objects: Nothing out of the Ordinary

Abstract

Imagine mindlessly kneading some clay into some arbitrary shape. A gollyswoggle is an object that has exactly that shape and cannot survive even minimal changes in shape. An incar is an object that, at its full size, looks just like a car in a garage, but that, unlike a car in a garage, will cease to exist if its constitutive matter leaves the garage. A trog is an object composed of a dog and tree trunk. There are no trogs, incars, gollyswoggles or other such extraordinary objects. But there are dogs, tree trunks, statues and other such ordinary objects. In Objects, I defend this conservative view about which objects there are. It’s an uphill battle. (More on what exactly conservatism is in my exchange with Louis deRosset.) In Chapter 2, I present the arguments and puzzles that have driven so many metaphysicians away from conservatism: debunking arguments, arbitrariness arguments, the argument from vagueness, the overdetermination argument, the problem of material constitution and the problem of the many. In Chapter 3, I examine the alternatives to conservatism: permissivist views that affirm the existence of trogs, incars and/or gollyswoggles, and eliminativist views which deny the existence of dogs, trunks and/or statues.