There are more, or fewer, things than most of us think

Noonan, Harold W.

Abstract

In Chapter 12 of his book Material Beings (Van Inwagen, Peter. 1990. Material Beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press) van Inwagen argues that there are no artefacts, or very few, certainly fewer than most people believe. Artisans very rarely create, at least in the sense of causing things to come into existence. The argument in Chapter 12 is a very powerful one. I do not think that it establishes van Inwagen’s conclusion, but it does, I think, given its (plausible) premise, establish that if there are not far fewer material things in the world than we ordinarily believe, then there are far more. In this sense it establishes, as Russell once said, ‘the truth about physical objects must be strange’. Furthermore, I argue at the end, we cannot avoid this conclusion even if we reject van Inwagen’s premise. Thus the defender of our common sense ontology is caught on the horns of a dilemma. So our commonsense ontology is indefensible.

Citation

Noonan, H. W. (2024). There are more, or fewer, things than most of us think. Metaphysica, https://doi.org/10.1515/mp-2023-0035

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 29, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Publication Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 31, 2024
• Journal: Metaphysica
• Print ISSN: 1437-2053
• Electronic ISSN: 1874-6373
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/mp-2023-0035
• Keywords: Philosophy
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/30137711
• Publisher URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/mp-2023-0035/html