Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:58:19.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Natural Objects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2016

JOSHUA D. K. BROWN
JOSHUA D. K. BROWN*
Affiliation:
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This paper introduces a framework for thinking about ontological questions—in particular, the Special Composition Question—and shows how the framework might help support something like an account of restricted composition. The framework takes the form of an account of natural objects, in analogy with David Lewis's account of natural properties. Objects, like properties, come in various metaphysical grades, from the fundamental, fully objective, perfectly natural objects to the nomologically otiose, maximally gerrymandered, perfectly non-natural objects. The perfectly natural objects, I argue, are the mereological simples, and (roughly) a collection composes an object of degree-n naturalness if and only if its members are arranged F-wise, for some property F that appears in the degree-n natural laws. Arbitrary composites turn out to be perfectly non-natural objects and are metaphysical bystanders. Ordinary composite objects fall in between. Some—e.g., atoms—are very (though not perfectly) natural; others—e.g., tables—are highly non-natural.

Keywords

metaphysicsontologymereology
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Summer 2016 , pp. 254 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, D. M. (1978) Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Azzouni, Jody. (2010) ‘Ontology and the Word “Exist”: Uneasy Relations’. Philosophia Mathematica, 18, 74–101.Google Scholar
Baker, Lynne Rudder. (2007) The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Balashov, Yuri. (2003a) ‘Temporal Parts and Superluminal Motion’. Philosophical Papers, 32, 1–13.Google Scholar
Balashov, Yuri. (2003b) ‘Restricted Diachronic Composition, Immanent Causality, and Objecthood: A Reply to Hudson’. Philosophical Papers, 32, 23–30.Google Scholar
Barnes, Elizabeth. (2012) ‘Emergence and Fundamentality’. Mind, 121, 873–901.Google Scholar
Cameron, Ross. (2008) ‘Turtles All the Way Down: Regress, Priority, and Fundamentality’. The Philosophical Quarterly, 58, 1–14.Google Scholar
Cameron, Ross. (2010) ‘How to Have a Radically Minimal Ontology’. Philosophical Studies, 151, 249–64.Google Scholar
Susan, Carey, and Fei, Xu. (2001) ‘Infants’ Knowledge of Objects: Beyond Object Files and File Tracking’. Cognition, 80, 179–213.Google Scholar
Dorr, Cian. (2002) ‘The Simplicity of Everything’. PhD thesis, Princeton University.Google Scholar
Dorr, Cian. (2003) ‘Merricks on the Existence of Human Organisms’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67, 711–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorr, Cian. (2005) ‘What We Disagree about When We Disagree about Ontology’. In Kalderon, Mark Eli (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 234–86.Google Scholar
Geach, P. T. (1980) Reference and Generality. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hawley, Katherine. (2014) ‘Ontological Innocence’. In Cotnoir, A. J. and Baxter, Donald L. M. (eds.), Composition as Identity (New York: Oxford University Press), 70–89.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, John. (2006) Metaphysical Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendry, Robin. (2010) ‘Ontological Reduction and Molecular Structure’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 41, 183–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Hud. (2002) ‘Moving Faster than Light’. Analysis, 62, 203–205.Google Scholar
Hudson, Hud. (2003) ‘Immanent Causality and Diachronic Composition: A Reply to Balashov’. Philosophical Papers, 32, 15–22.Google Scholar
Koslicki, Kathrin. (2008) The Structure of Objects. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1983) ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’. Reprinted in David Lewis, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 8–55.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1986) On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1993) ‘Many but Almost One.’ Reprinted in David Lewis, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 164–82.Google Scholar
Markosian, Ned. (1998) ‘Brutal Composition’. Philosophical Studies, 92, 211–49.Google Scholar
Merlo, Giovanni. (2010) ‘Leibnizian Aggregates are not Mind-Dependent Entities’. Presented at the 4th Annual Leibniz Society of North America Conference, Dec. 3–5, 2010.Google Scholar
Merricks, Trenton. (2001) Objects and Persons. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Kristie. (2009) ‘Defending Contingentism in Metaphysics’. Dialectica, 63, 23–49.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (1951) ‘The Conception of Intrinsic Value’. In Moore, G. E., Philosophical Studies (New York: Humanities Press), 253–75.Google Scholar
Paul, L. A. (2012) ‘Metaphysics as Modeling: The Handmaiden's Tale’. Philosophical Studies, 160, 1–29.Google Scholar
Ramsey, Jeffry. (1997) ‘Molecular Shape, Reduction, Explanation, and Approximate Concepts’. Synthese, 111, 233–51.Google Scholar
Rea, Michael C. (1997) ‘Supervenience and Co-Location’. American Philosophical Quarterly, 34, 367–75.Google Scholar
Scerri, Eric, and McIntyre, Lee. (1997) ‘The Case for Philosophy of Chemistry’. Synthese, 111, 213–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2010) ‘Monism: The Priority of the Whole’. Philosophical Review, 119, 31–76.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2013) ‘The Action of the Whole’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 87, 67–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (1993) ‘Naturalness, Intrinsicality, and Duplication’. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (1996) ‘Intrinsic Properties’. Philosophical Studies, 83, 1–27.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (2001) Four-Dimensionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Unger, Peter. (1980) ‘The Problem of the Many’. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5, 411–67.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter. (1990) Material Beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Dean W. (1995) ‘Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution’. Philosophical Review, 104, 53–110.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Dean W. (1996) ‘Could Extended Objects be Made out of Simple Parts? An Argument for “Atomless Gunk”’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 56, 1–29.Google Scholar