A Metaphysics of Ordinary Things and Why We Need It

Mainstream metaphysicians today take little ontological interest in the world as we interact with it. They interpret the variety of things in the world as variety only of concepts applied to things that are basically of the same sort—e.g., sums of particles or temporal parts of particles. I challenge this approach by formulating and defending for a contrasting line of thought. Using what I call ‘the Constitution View,’ I argue that ordinary things (like screwdrivers and walnuts) are as ontologically significant as particles. I further argue for why we need recourse to such ordinary things in our basic ontology. Metaphysics has enjoyed a vigorous revival in the last few decades. Even so, there has been little ontological interest in the things that we interact with everyday—trees, tables, other people.1 It is not that metaphysicians ignore ordinary things altogether. Indeed, they are happy to say that sentences like ‘The daffodils are out early this year’ or ‘My computer crashed again’ are true. But they take the truth of such sentences not to require that a full description of reality mention daffodils or computers. Many metaphysicians now interpret the apparent variety of things in the world as variety only of concepts applied to things that are basically of the same sort—for example, sums of particles or of temporal parts of particles. I want to challenge this approach by formulating and defending a contrasting line of thought. On the contrasting line of thought, the differences among ordinary things are ontological: a screwdriver is a thing of a fundamentally different kind from a walnut, and both 1 There are some notable exceptions. See, for example, Crawford L. Elder, Real Natures and Familiar Objects (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Amie L. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Ordinary Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and Michael C. Rea, ‘Sameness Without Identity: An Aristotelian Solution to the Problem of Material Constitution,’ Ratio 11 (new series),1998: 316–328. Some aspects of his Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) suggest that Saul Kripke would also be sympathetic, but he is so cautious in his commitments that I hesitate to claim him as an ally. 5 10.1017/S0031819108000284 &2008 The Royal Institute of Philosophy