Beginning with Aristotle, philosophers have taken artifacts to be ontologically deficient. This paper proposes a theory of artifacts, according to which artifacts are ontologically on a par with other material objects. I formulate a nonreductive theory that regards artifacts as constituted by - but not identical to - aggregates of particles. After setting out the theory, I rebut a number of arguments that disparage the ontological status of artifacts.

Mereological nihilists typically employ a paraphrase strategy in order to mitigate the apparent absurdity of their denial of the existence of composite objects. I argue here that the nihilist's paraphrase strategy is incomplete, because no schema for generating nihilistically acceptable paraphrases of sentences concerning material constitution has ever been given. Nor can an adequate schema be arrived at by generalising things that nihilists have already said. I fill this lacuna in the nihilist's account by developing and defending a novel paraphrase (...) schema that makes essential reference to the determinable‐determinate relation that holds between arrangement‐properties instantiated by the simples. (shrink)

In the large recent literature on the nature of human persons, persons are usually studied in isolation from the world in which they live. What persons are most fundamentally, philosophers say, are human animals, or brains, or perhaps souls -- without any consideration of the social and physical environments without which persons would not exist. In this article, I want to compensate for such overly narrow focus. Instead of beginning with the nature of persons cut off from any environment, I (...) shall begin with metaphysical consideration of the world of which persons are a part. I shall then briefly describe my view of persons, according to which persons are material objects like other concrete things in the world, but are unique in their first-person perspectives. Finally, I shall consider some of the special relations that persons, and only persons, have to other things in the world. (shrink)

I propose that constitution is a case of composition in which, for example, the lump of clay composes the statue. In other words, we can reduce constitution to composition. Composition does all of the work that we want from an account of constitution, and we do not need two separate relations. Along the way, I offer reasons to reject weak supplementation. Acknowledgments (which by my mistake were not included in the journal publication): Many people have given me feedback over the (...) years on this paper or an ancestor of it, and I apologize for oversights in my acknowledgments here. Special thanks to Trenton Merricks for comments on several drafts of this paper. Thanks also for helpful comments and discussions to Eugene Mills, Donald Smith, Peter Sutton, David Liebesman, Charlie Tanksley, Amanda Hicks, Kristl Laux, and to an audience at the University at Buffalo conference in honor of E. J. Lowe, an audience at Amherst College, and an audience at the 2017 APA Eastern Division Meeting. Thank you also to multiple anonymous referees along the way. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new theory in temporal ontology, ‘wave theory’, and argues for its attractions over and above existing tensed theories of time.

The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism's success so far.

ABSTRACT: There are some problems with Lynne Baker’s constitution account of personal identity that become evident when we consider brain transplant thought experiments and two kinds of rare cases of conjoined twins — the first appears to be one organism but two persons and the second seems to involve two organisms associated with one person. To handle the problems arising from brain transplants, the constitution theorist must admit an additional level of constitution between the organism and the person. To resolve (...) the problems posed by the two kinds of conjoined twins, the constitution theorist must accept that constitution is not always a one-to-one relationship. RESUME: La théorie constitutionnelle de l’identité personnelle de Lynne Baker soulève certains problèmes qui deviennent évidents lorsque l’on considère des expériences de pensée sur des transplantations de cerveaux et deux genres de cas rares de jumeaux conjoints — du premier cas paraît s’ensuivre qu’il y a deux personnes pour un seul organisme alors que du deuxième découle qu’une seule personne existe dans deux organismes. Afin d’expliquer les problèmes qui surviennent avec les transplantations de cerveaux, le théoricien de la constitution doit admettre un niveau de constitution intermédiaire entre l’organisme et la personne. Pour résoudre les problèmes que posent les cas de jumeaux conjoints, le théoricien de la constitution doit accepter que la relation de constitution ne se réalise pas toujours entre deux termes. (shrink)

A traditional argument based on Leibniz’s Law concludes that, for example, a statue and the piece of marble of which it is made are two different objects. This is because they have different properties: the statue can survive the loss of some of its parts but the piece of marble cannot. Lynne Rudder Baker adds that the piece of marble constitutes the statue. In this paper I focus on what I think is the most powerful objection to Baker’s account of (...) the constitution relation, which has to do with her notion of circumstances. I present the objection following Derk Pereboom’s formulation and, afterwards, I analyse Baker’s answers to the criticism. I conclude that they make her overall project less attractive. Finally, I propose a new answer to the criticism. This will suppose a new formulation of the constitution relation, albeit done in the spirit of Baker’s account. (shrink)

I introduce a methodology for doing the history of philosophy called philosophical modeling. I then employ this methodology to give a theory of Kant's distinction between things in themselves and appearances. This theory models Kant's distinction on the distinction between a constituting object and the object it constitutes.

David Chalmers argues that virtual reality is a genuine kind of reality. In one of its readings, this “virtual realism” states that virtual entities ontologically depend on real digital entities. This article explores that suggestion and offers a novel account of the dependence of the virtual on the digital. Drawing on Lynne Rudder Baker's theory of constitution, we contend that virtual objects should be seen as constituted by digital objects, when these are placed in certain favourable circumstances. We explore the (...) rationale and implications of this view, which we see as a promising form of virtual realism. (shrink)

Constitution theorists have argued that due to a difference in persistence conditions, persons are not identical with the animals or the bodies that constitute them. A popular line of objection to the view that persons are not identical with the animals/bodies that constitute them is that the view commits one to undesirable overpopulation, with too many minds and too many thinkers. Constitution theorists are well aware of these overpopulation concerns and have gone a long way toward answering them. However, there (...) is one mental excess worry that remains especially problematic. It is argued here that the worry about too many thoughts, or too many instantiations of mentality in general, remains a serious threat to the constitution view of persons. What exactly the threat is and how it arises is described in detail in Section III. It is then shown that attempts to allay the concern are unsuccessful. I argue, in particular, that appealing to the distinction between derivative and non-derivative instantiation fails to solve the problem. (shrink)

According to Lynne Rudder Baker, our everyday world is populated, among other things, by what she calls “intention-dependent objects” (“ID objects”), i.e., objects which “could not exist in a world lacking beings with beliefs, desires, and intentions” (Baker (2007), p. 11). Baker’s claim that what exists, at least in part, depends on human activity opens her up to the concern, or so her critics have argued, that new objects and new kinds of objects can apparently be “conjured” into existence, given (...) her framework, simply by adopting new ways of speaking or thinking about already existing things (Koslicki (2018), Chapter 8). When Baker responds to a version of this objection launched against her account in Zimmerman (2002), she proposes that we cannot simply speak or think things into existence for which “our conventions and practices do not have a place” (Baker (2007), p. 44). In order for this response to be effective, however, we need to know more about how our conventions and practices support the creation of some ID objects and the kinds to which they belong, while disallowing the attempted creation of others. In this paper, I examine the effectiveness of Baker’s response in addressing the challenges posed by the inclusion of ID objects, such as artifacts, in Baker’s practical realist ontology. -/- . (shrink)

This paper focuses on two prominent arguments claiming that physicalism entails reductionism. One is Kim’s causal exclusion argument (CEA), and the other is Papineau’s causal argument. The paper argues that Kim’s CEA is not logically valid and that it is driven by two implausible justifications. One is “Edward’s dictum”, which is alien to non-reductive physicalism and should be rejected. The other is by endorsement of Papineau’s conception of the physical, immanent in Papineau’s causal argument. This argument only arrives at the (...) physical property-property identities by using a conception of the physical that licenses anything to be reductively physical, including putative core anti-physical entities; thus, leaving Papineau’s causal argument and Kim’s CEA without a reductive physicalist conclusion of philosophical interest. (shrink)

In this paper we examine different answers to the question of what we are, focusing in particular on eliminative and reductivist proposals about persons or selves. We conclude that, as of today, dualism seems more reasonable than naturalism, if by naturalism we understand the thesis that psychological entities can be reduced or eliminated.

The paper presents, motivates, critiques, and proposes revisions to Baker’s Constitution View, which includes her definitions of constitution, derivative features, and numerical sameness. The paper argues that Baker should add a mereological clause to her definition of constitution in order to avoid various counterexamples.

According to the so-called "standard account" regarding the problem of material constitution, a statue and a lump of clay that makes it up are not identical. The usual objection is that this view yields many objects in the same place at the same time. Lynne Rudder Baker's theory of constitution is a recent and sophisticated version of the standard account. She argues that the aforementioned objection can be answered by defining a relation of being the same P as (sameP). In (...) this paper I shall examine consequences of her response and show that sameP has wrong formal properties, as a result of which this solution cannot be accepted. (shrink)